


Hiding Space

by definitelynotregan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alienfuck Deductibleworld, Aliens, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Guy Thinks He's Forcing Them to Fuck But Really He's Just Making Them Deal With Their Trauma, Blackmail, Blackmailed into Dominating Rapist, Breastfeeding, Cervical Penetration, Character is guiltily aroused watching loved one’s distress, Choking, Consenting to gangrape to protect a loved one from the same fate, Dissociation, Double Penetration in One Hole, DubCon to NonCon, Dubcon Breastmilk Drinking, Dubcon Tickling, Dubious Consentacles, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Face Slapping, Flashbacks, Forced Orgasm, Forced to Beg for Rape, Forced to Rape a Loved One to Protect Them from Worse Fate, Found Family, Frottage, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lactation, Medical Examination, Mentions of Sci Fi Slavery, Multiple Orgasms, Non-Graphic Mentions of Chemical Burns, Other, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Pining, Porn With Plot, Post-Orgasm Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Public Humiliation, Public Sex, Research Porn, Resolved Sexual Tension, Scar Kissing, Sex Work, Size Difference, Survival Sadomasochism, Survivor Guilt, Tentacles, Threats of Enslavement, Trauma Recovery, Triple Penetration, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Uniform Kink, Xeno, post-alien invasion, sex show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:27:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23960803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitelynotregan/pseuds/definitelynotregan
Summary: Maia Adams has been a famous war hero, an infamous postbellum smuggler, and a mostly ordinary mother. This unlikely combination of jobs was bound to result in some sort of weirdness. I just never thought that weirdness would be an alien sex show.
Relationships: Female Space Smuggler in Debt/Aliens she performs a live sex show on to get money, Female Space Smuggler/Therapist Wife, Indebted Female Space Smuggler/Pining Male Space Smuggler Partner Who Kept Her Alive During Invasion, Indebted Female Space Smuggler/Slaving Loan Shark With a Lactation Fetish, Pining Male Space Smuggler Partner/Sex Worker with a Crush on the Smugglers Who Saved Her Life
Comments: 32
Kudos: 34
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	1. An Unlikely Gangbang

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/c4pq6ugo5vyzveuugvepasbfi/playlist/0yFYYv8b0XIXEa7zJhbeUB?si=GejeSgO4RQalc_XOAhK2bg

Maia Adams _really_ hates tentacle porn. I mean, obviously no surviving Sentinel would ever admit to liking it. But even after swapping her Space Force uniform for a leather jacket more befitting a smuggler, Maia took it to another level. “Collaborators,” she liked to hiss at advertisements. “Traitors. Squidfuckers.” She was still doing this six years after humanity’s surrender—right up until she invited me to her gangbang with our new tentacled overlords.

We were finishing a medical drop-off in Arsia Mons City when it happened. We had just boarded the shuttle, pulled our bandanas down around our necks, and settled into our well-worn seats in the cockpit. We were waiting for the okay to depart when Maia suddenly asked, “Hey, will you be my support person tomorrow when I go on _Slimeholes?”_

I dropped my brand new Interface Plus 2 on the floor, immediately destroying the “shatter-resistant” glass. I barely registered the saltwater gel leaking onto my boots as I turned to gawk at my best friend.

“What the _fuck,_ Maia?”

“Ha, okay, cool.” She pretended to be checking the instrument panel rather than being hurt by my reaction. “I told Petra I wanted to go by myself, anyway.”

“No, I’ll go with you,” I said. “Just… _why?”_

“You’re going to have to be more specific, Hunter. Why am I going on _Slimeholes_? Why am I asking you to come along? Why isn’t Petra coming with me?”

“...yes.”

“Right, well.” Maia tugged off her glove and worked at untangling some of her unruly curls. “Remember how I said I was taking out a loan because of the whole insurance fuckshit?”

“Yeah, of course. Are you having trouble making payments?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s one way to put it.” Maia laughed darkly. “You know Lester’s ‘super-low-interest short-term loan!’ deal? That one where your only choice is pay it back in a single payment or default?”

“Maia!” My mouth fell open in horror. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“Look, judge all you want, but you’d do the same if it was _your_ wife crying hysterically on the Interface because your baby was turning blue and the only hospital on Mars was demanding prepayment before they’d even run tests.” Maia shrugged. “I knew it was a gamble borrowing from Lester, but I was desperate. And InsureStellar approved the claim and everything! But like I was telling you last week, they sent the fucking check to the hospital instead of reimbursing us directly. Seriously, fuck this new insurance system. Anyway, I finally got hold of someone at the hospital who managed to refund the money back to the insurance company, but now they’re saying it could take another three months before we see the money.”

“Jesus, I didn’t think it was possible for insurance companies to get worse.” I grimaced. “Did you ask Lester for an extension?”

“Yep. I even showed him the insurance letters and everything, but no dice. In his defense, though, he personally made sure the hospital had the money within twenty minutes of me calling him. It’s not his fault insurance moves at the speed of Neptune.”

“Maia.” I stared at her incredulously. “Lester sells defaulters into slavery.”

“Hey, I didn’t say he was a good person!” she protested, then added quietly, “Hunter, it was _Dion._ I had to do it.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “I’m not judging you, I promise. I just—surely any other loan company would have—”

“My income is all below-the-table,” she reminded me. “Petra doesn’t make nearly enough to take out that kind of loan on her own. And that felony charge I got from that sting? Yeah, that takes every government relief program off the table, and not just for me. For my entire family.”

I ran my fingers through my hair too, though I had a lot less of it to play with when anxious than she did. “When is your loan due?”

“Close of business tomorrow.”

 _“Maia!”_ I felt so dizzy I was afraid I’d pass out. “Maia, this is extremely fucking bad!”

“No shit, Lieutenant Obvious, _Sir.”_

“Why didn’t you just take the monthly repayment plan?!”

“Because the one-time plan was only 1% interest over six months, while the monthly payment was going to be 15% over ten years. With early repayment penalties.”

I was so stunned by the difference between those two amounts I forgot about being upset. “Wow, really?” I quickly did the math in my head. “That’s… that’s… like…. 90-something thousand bits interest?” 

“93,000.” Maia crossed her arms, still glaring at me. “That’s more than I paid for my ship. So that’s why, _at the time,_ the one-time plan seemed like the logical, responsible choice. Besides, I was hashing out the loan details with Lester while sitting on a cargo hold full of platinum ore. It should have been easy to pay him back. It just… didn’t work out. So I’m going on _Slimeholes_ and hoping insurance eventually pays me back.”

I sat there, too guilt-stricken to speak. I’d known things had been tight for Maia and Petra since Dion’s health scare, but I’d had no idea my jumpiness and resulting bad call on the platinum haul were what had wrecked her finances. Obviously, 200,000 bits was a lot to abandon at the best of times, but now I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Maia, I am so, so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea. I should have done a better job tracing that transmission—”

“Hunter, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not!” I slammed my hand onto the beeping call button to silence it. “It’s extremely not okay for you to default on a loan to Lester!”

“True,” she conceded. “But I’m not going to default if I can avoid it. And it’s okay that we spaced the cargo. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is!” I insisted, raising my voice over the second round of beeping. “I knew in my gut the transmission was spoofed, but I panicked when the top-level ID came back official. I should have just—”

“Hang on.” Maia held up a hand to pause me and activated the communicator, permanently silencing the beeping. “Hesperian Shuttle to Control, over.”

“Hesperian Shuttle, you’re cleared to launch, over.”

“Roger. Thanks, control. Launching in T-minus five. Over.” She turned off the communicator again and swiveled to look at me. “Hunter, I didn’t tell you about the loan sooner because I knew you’d react like this. You did what I pay you to do: you kept watch and warned me when you saw something fishy. That pirate ship was damn convincing as a government craft. And I was the one who jettisoned the cargo. We’ve just had a really, _really_ shitty string of luck. It sucks. But right now, I need you to stop wallowing in guilt and help me save Petra and Dion.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Of course I’ll do it.”

“Thanks.” Maia hesitated, then warned me, “If things go wrong tomorrow, they’ll probably take The Hesperian. My lawyer is going to be there, but you might want to move your stuff off-ship for a few days, just in case they—”

“Christ, Maia, I don’t care about that!” I rubbed my forehead, trying to quell the rising pressure. “You know, I have a friend on Earth with this huge underground bunker under his house. Maybe the three of you could—”

“Won’t work.” Maia pulled down her collar so I could see the blinking red tracker under her skin. “They tagged all three of us. If we don’t pay by close of business tomorrow or turn ourselves in for processing the day after…”

I didn’t even suggest trying to remove the tracker. The urban legends were less nightmare-inducing than the truth.

“Okay, then we’ll run,” I said. “Lester won’t come looking for us in another star system, and it’s not even five lightyears to Alpha Centauri. Or we can just stay constantly moving, never staying anywhere long enough for them to track us. We’ll stick to the mining territories and recycle our air and water and food.”

“That sounds both disgusting and exhausting.” Maia wrinkled her nose. “And besides, there’s zero medical care that far out. It would be too risky if anything happened to Dion.”

Maia had clearly ruled out all possible solutions already.

“Then I’ll take a new loan out for you!” I said desperately. 

She laughed. “From where? You’re in the same ship as me, unless you’ve been hiding some legitimate business venture all this time.”

“I’ll borrow from Lester!” I said. “I’ll just take out a loan with a monthly payment plan, and you can give me the money once insurance finally pays you.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Maia said. “First of all, I wouldn’t let you take that kind of risk for me. Second of all, the early repayment penalty is insane, so we would be stuck with that second loan for years even if insurance pays. And third of all, Lester knows both of us too well to let us get away with that. He jumped at the chance to loan me money. I guarantee you, he just wants to knock me down a peg by making me do one of his gross sex shows. He thinks I’m ‘uppity,’ remember?”

I certainly did remember. Lester wasn’t shy about sexually harassing Maia, be it commenting on her uniform’s fit or complaining she would be less ‘bitchy’ if she got ‘a good dicking down from the real thing’. I would have liked to have punched him for any of those things, but Maia wasn’t wrong about the financial incentives of not punching our best customers. But this time, he’d backed her into a corner so tight even Slimies couldn’t have wriggled out, and I wanted to kill him for it. If nothing else, I wanted to stand tall in some courtroom and deliver a devastating condemnation of Lester’s business practices before successfully arguing that Maia could not, in fact, be legally sold into slavery for her debt. I spent a moment fantasizing about that before conceding defeat.

“Gah, fine, you’re right!” I kicked my broken Interface 2 in despair, and the noise was louder than I’d expected. I flinched slightly less violently than Maia. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it would be that loud. I was only trying to have a minor tantrum.”

“Oh, no worries there.” Maia started the shuttle ignition with a shaky hand. “I had a breakdown in the airlock yesterday.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I screamed and cried for like thirty minutes straight while Petra and Dion were napping.”

“That’s a smart idea,” I said. “Want to do that together tonight?”

She finally grinned again. “I’ll let you know.”

She piloted the shuttle back to The Hesperian, the vessel she’d won at the very first Space Force decommissioning auction after humanity had surrendered. It was a CS53B spaceplane, an older cargo version of the MS53F we had flown (and crashed) together in the Space Force. I think The Hesperian’s near-identical layout to The Everest’s was what had made me instantly accept Maia’s invitation to join her. It wasn’t just about feeling at home; it was about already knowing all the best hiding spaces. Then again, recently surviving hell together in The Everest's version of what Maia called her 'captain's cabin' hadn't hurt, either. Her new spaceplane had just felt safe. It had felt like home at a time when everyone, me included, had been desperate for familiarity.

“Have you even been close to one of those…” I couldn’t bring myself to call them even by their derogatory nickname. “...those _things_ since The Everest cra—”

“No.” Maia unconsciously stroked the burn scar on her left arm. “Have you?”

“Nope.” I rested my right temple on the cold window. “Hey, Maia? I know we promised never to talk about that time you freaked out and forgot who you were, but what should I do tomorrow if—”

“I’ll be fine, Hunter,” Maia cut me off. “You’re as bad as Petra! Look, this isn’t some logistical problem for you to fix, and it’s not some psychological problem for Petra to fix. It’s a personal problem, and I’m handling it. If I thought there was any other solution, I’d have asked you months ago. I just need you to watch my back for a few hours tomorrow. Are you going to be able to?”

“Obviously,” I said, which a non-broken Interface 2 probably would have translated into Slime-speak as, _“I would follow you to the Slimies’ home planet if you asked me to.”_

“Thanks.” She turned to me and winked. “And hey, I’m excited for the excuse to fight some of those squid bastards again, even if it’s all fake. It’ll be just like the good old days!”

“Yeah, right down to humans getting raped and killed by Slimies,” I muttered.

“The killing is probably staged.” Maia sounded uncertain. “Right?”

I just gave her a look. She was usually optimistic, sure, but not to the point of naïveté.

“Okay, it’s probably not staged,” she admitted. “But that’s why I want you as my support person. Petra and Dion will stay here while you and I go to Lester’s station. I made Petra swear not to watch. I don't want her seeing it, especially not if I… if anything happens to me. But someone has to make sure Lester doesn’t pull a fast one.”

“I’m not going to be able to stop an entire arena of Slimies if they get carried away and decide to kill you.”

“No, but you can bring my body back for Petra,” Maia said calmly, like we were discussing how to get a library book back to Earth without racking up literally astronomical fines. “Lester is a sexist old asshole; I don’t trust him not to try to screw Petra over. I think he’s already pegged her as less, uh, _business savvy_ than we are. I’d just feel better if he was dealing with you instead of her.”

I considered that, then nodded. “All right. So my job is to make sure Lester crosses all his T's, and, worst case scenario, to bring your body back to Petra.”

“That’s the basic idea.” Maia’s shoulders relaxed. “I mean, obviously I wouldn’t say no to a little moral support, but if that costs extra…”

“I’ll put it on your tab,” I joked.

It took about twenty minutes to get from the city to The Hesperian's boondocking site in the Arsia Mons wilderness. Technically, the area was a “nature preserve.” Realistically, it was an abandoned patch of red planet. Its main draw was that no one was on duty to collect camping fees. As a bonus, there were also no other campers. That wasn't a surprise, though. Camping wasn't a popular hobby anymore; even most of our fellow space haulers preferred to dock at ship stops so they could refuel, restock, and grab a proper shower.

Maia docked the shuttle into its bay under The Hesperian. We secured the shuttle and powered everything down, and then the two of us trudged up to the galley. I inhaled deeply, and the smell of dinner made my mouth water.

“Do you hear that, Dion?” Petra said as we climbed the last set of metal stairs. “I think Mommy’s home.”

“I’m not Dion’s Mommy!” Maia called in a silly voice. “I’m a Martian Mummy, here to eat babies! Are there any cute babies? I’ll only take a finger or two!”

Dion squealed happily. Maia and I entered the galley to find Dion clutching fistfuls of cereal in his highchair while Petra stirred something savory and well-spiced on the stove. I inhaled deeply again. As far as space meals went, Petra's were, by far, the most palatable.

“Welcome back.” Petra kissed Maia as the latter washed her hands. "How was the trade?"

“Boring,” Maia said.

“Boring is good.”

“Yeah, I’ll absolutely take boring right now.” Maia dried her hands and leaned over to kiss Dion. “Hey, little guy. Did you have a good day with Mama?”

“It was a little rough, thanks to _someone_ fighting his morning nap, but we made up for it in the afternoon,” Petra said, then, “I refuse to let him give up the morning nap yet. Oh, Dion, no!” 

Petra dropped her ladle back into the pot and helped untangle Dion’s strong fingers from Maia’s curls. Maia just laughed and, once free, pulled her tresses into a rough ponytail with the elastic she’d been wearing on her wrist.

“It’s my fault for leaving my hair down,” she said. “I meant to put it back up once there were no more clients to impress.” She pressed her lips to the raised white scar disappearing into Dion’s hairline. “There, much better, right? No temptation to pull Mommy’s hair.”

"Awawa," Dion said.

"That almost sounded like 'Mama!'" Petra smiled as she watched the two of them.

"It wasn't even close!" Maia said. "Say, 'Mommy,' Dion. 'Mommy.'"

Dion only stuck his cereal in Maia's mouth in reply. Maia pretended to eat his fingers, which elicited a belly laugh from the baby.

Dion was nine months old, which is presumably the chillest stage babies ever go through. I didn't know enough about kids to say whether he had any developmental problems from his early medical problems, something Maia and Petra constantly asked my opinion on. All I knew was that at nine months, Dion was at a sweet spot where he could sit up unassisted and occasionally pull himself onto his feet, but he wasn’t running around destroying stuff. He was a lot of cute without a lot of mayhem, at least as far as kids went.

“You two can go ahead and eat.” I grabbed the open container of baby food from the counter. “I’ll feed Dion.”

“Thanks.” Petra looked relieved. “I could definitely use a break.”

“Hey, little man.” I winked at Dion. “Were you being an asshole about sleep earlier? You gotta enjoy those naps while you can, buddy! I’d give anything for a nap most days.”

Dion grinned and babbled at me in response.

“Oh, really?” I spooned some mushy broccoli and chicken into his mouth.

He made a face and spat out half his food—which I caught with the tiny spoon, because this wasn’t my first baby rodeo—and made that noise that always reminded me of pigeons back on Earth.

“Whoa, really?” I asked in faux amazement. “Shit, dude, that sounds wild!”

“Don’t swear in front of Dion,” Petra said, but she was smiling.

“Little late for that.” Maia loaded mashed potatoes—from a box, of course—onto her plate. “With the way things have been going around here lately, the only question is whether his first word is going to be ‘fuck’ or ‘shit.’”

“It might be ‘goddammit,’” Petra said, fairly.

“Can you say, ‘fuck,’ Dion?” I asked Dion as I fed him another bite. “Fuck. Fffuuuckkk. Okay, now you try it.”

Dion only stuck his tiny fingers into the bowl I’d held a little too close and flung a handful of mush onto my face and shirt. He cackled wildly at his handiwork.

“Hey, not cool!” I protested.

Petra and Maia laughed with me. Dion stuck his fingers in his mouth, smearing half the baby food on his face and then spitting out the rest a moment later.

“Guess we’re having another bath tonight,” Petra sighed.

“I’ll handle it,” Maia volunteered. “I missed him today, and we’re going to be separated again tomorrow. We should go on a vacation once we catch a break from all this bullshit.”

After dinner, I cleaned the galley while Maia and Dion took their bath in the very tub Dion had been born in. During Maia's pregnancy, the three of us had torn out a couple of bathroom walls and rebuilt them further out into the captain's cabin, just so Maia could have a big bathtub to eventually labor in—and to ease her aching joints until then. It had come in pretty handy since Dion's birth, and not just for mush-related incidents. We’d made a locking lid that went over the top, so it made a good hiding space for valuables during bumpy journeys and pirate raids. Once, during a particularly close pirate raid, it had even hidden Petra and Dion for more than an hour.

When I knocked on the wall next to the open bathroom door, Maia said, “Come in.”

I stepped just inside, planning to avoid staring at Maia in the tub. But I couldn’t help noticing Petra massaging something fluorescent blue into Maia’s breast until it disappeared. Dion sleepily nursed from the other breast, his little feet kicking every so often in the water.

“Okay, I’ve gotta ask,” I said. “What’s the blue stuff?”

“LactAmazing,” Petra said. “It’s the hormone cream I used to induce lactation when Dion was born. That loan guy, Lester—he wants Maia to use it, for some reason.”

I said nothing. If Petra didn’t know about the Slimies’ obsession with human milk, not to mention Lester’s, it was probably better not to tell her. I cleared my throat.

“I was just wondering… what time do we need to leave tomorrow?” I asked.

“We were just talking about that,” Petra said. “Dion and I will probably take the shuttle around 0700, if that works for you. I know you need to leave early, and Dion has been so fussy lately. I think his molars are coming in. I’d like to get settled into the hotel in the early morning so I can push his stroller around Arsia Mons Foothills Park for his morning nap.”

“Lester’s broadcast station is on Phobos, so it’s not a long flight,” Maia said. “I’m supposed to check in by 0900, so let’s plan to launch by 0800?”

“Good call, Sarge,” I said.

“Thanks, Lieutenant Rigel.” Maia snorted and, still lying naked with her baby in her half-full bathtub, saluted me.


	2. Into the Slimehole

I slept like shit that night. I finally gave up an hour before my alarm went off and got dressed. When I left my bunk, I found Maia already awake on the middeck. She was cradling her dinged-up aluminum water bottle and gazing absently out the window. I looked where she was staring, and I could just see Mars’ distant moon, Deimos, behind the much-closer Phobos.

“Want any breakfast?” I asked Maia.

She shook her head. I hadn’t seen her so nauseated since she was pregnant with Dion.

“Coffee?”

“I haven’t bought any in months,” Maia said. “Not that saving the money did me any good. Anyway, I already took a caffeine pill.”

My mind darted to the secret floor compartment in my quarters where I was hiding a large canister of coffee beans. She looked too green to enjoy something as precious as coffee right then, so I didn't mention it.

“Whiskey?”

“Yeah, but not yet. I’m going to want to chug down a few liters as soon as this bullshit is over.”

“I’ll save it for later, then.”

We stood there in a comfortable, familiar silence until Petra and Dion woke up. I offered to take care of a very cranky Dion so Petra and Maia could spend their last few minutes together in peace, but Maia was reluctant to let go of him. I couldn’t blame her. Instead, I loaded Petra’s bags and Dion’s diaper bag onto the shuttle and strapped in Dion’s travel seat.

It was only an overnight stay in Arsia Mons City, something Petra had done dozens of times already, and often for much longer durations. But I knew why she was crying. Lester’s porn shows were infamous for actors dying, which was apparently part of their appeal with slimy humans and aliens alike. I pretended to be checking the shuttle's safeguards while the three of them kissed and said their goodbyes. 

“I just need you to come back alive,” Petra was whispering. “We both need you! I’ve never made Dion laugh anywhere near as hard as you can.”

Maia, for her part, was somber but not teary. She stood in a strong stance, rubbing Petra’s back and soothing her. “Babe, he’s not even one. He’s the opposite of a tough crowd. Just drop something and make a funny face, and he’ll lose his shit.”

“Please just promise to do everything you can to take care of yourself and come back alive? And _free?”_ Petra broke down completely at the last two words.

“Hey, shh, no crying.” Maia mopped Petra’s face with a tissue. “You’re upsetting Dion. Look at him; he’s about to holler.”

Petra just cried harder. Sure enough, Dion joined in. Maia kissed them both, her shoulders taut as she tried to console them.

“Petra, seriously, there’s nothing to cry about.” Maia patted her wife’s back, giving me an apologetic look when I stole a glance at them. “It’ll be really embarrassing, yeah, but it’ll also be over fast. And babe, I’m getting paid _a hundred thousand bits_ for, like, two hours of looking pretty for the cameras! That’s so much money, and who knows? It might even be kind of fun and sexy, right? I still don’t want you watching, though.”

“I won't. I just don’t want you to go through this alone!”

“I won’t be alone. Hunter will be there the whole time.”

"Yes, but—" Petra lowered her voice so low I almost couldn’t hear her. “Hunter is sweet and competent, he really is, but he's not trained to handle severe PTSD. Especially not in a re-traumatizing situation like this one, especially not when _you both share the same triggers!”_

I quickly focused on cinching Dion’s flight harness a little tighter to the copilot's seat. Petra was right, as usual, but her words annoyed me. I couldn't quell my irrational feeling that she was trying to poison Maia against me, trying to take even these smallest of intimacies from us. I could tell how vehemently Maia didn’t want her coming with us, though, so I wasn’t about to let Petra have her way. But Maia stood firm and needed no intervention from me.

“Hunter will take fine care of me. He's gotten me through way worse. Besides, I refuse to let my son anywhere near Lester's porn station, and he's a little young to pilot the shuttle on his own.”

“What if you get in there and have flashbacks when they grab you?” Petra asked. “What if you have another fugue episode and run away again, only we can’t find you this time?” 

Petra tried to caress Maia’s scarred left arm, but Maia flinched and involuntarily yanked her arm out of reach.

“Sheesh,” Maia joked to ease the tension. “A gal forgets her name and jumps on a shuttle to Earth _one time,_ and no one ever lets her forget it.”

Petra didn’t laugh. “Maia, I’m serious.”

“I’ll be fine, Petra,” Maia assured her. “The war ended a long time ago, and I’ve mostly adjusted, I swear. Plus, you’ve done a good job healing me up since then.”

“Once again, I must remind you that post-nightmare cuddling is not 'therapy,' even if the cuddler _is_ a therapist by day.”

“Sure, but it’s probably better than nothing, though, right?”

“If I say yes, will you please let me come with you?”

“Hell no. That broadcast station is no place for the galaxy's prettiest therapist, much less a baby. ”

"Fine, you win." Petra sighed. “Just be careful. You’re tough, Maia, but you’re not invincible.”

“Says who? Honestly, I’m excited!” Maia said, so convincingly I almost believed her. “It’ll be my first time seeing Slimies up close since the crash. I’m excited to see how much I've improved from when I used to flinch watching TV. And isn’t it going to feel so fucking amazing to be free from that debt hanging over us?”

Maia was better than even The Hesperian at hiding things. Unfortunately for her, Petra was significantly better than the contraband dogs at sniffing things out. She sobbed harder at Maia’s words.

“You don’t even believe in CBT, Maia! Is that why you were going through my books yesterday? You can't just reframe a couple of fears and call yourself healed!”

“Come on, Petra, shhh.” Maia hugged Petra tightly and kissed her near the ear. “The books were actually really helpful, I swear! I’m just trying to have a positive attitude. I know I still have issues, honest. I'm scared out of my mind, but I was scared during the war, too. Sitting around helplessly is worse. It feels good to be doing something again, especially if it's to protect you and Dion.”

Petra could only press her face into Maia's chest in response.

By 0710, Dion was strapped into his travel seat and Maia and Petra had mostly finished their goodbyes. Maia and I helped Petra double-check her lists, but she was experienced at flying the shuttle by now. She just nodded silently, her eyes red but dry.

At the last minute, Petra surprised me by giving me a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Take good care of her,” she whispered into my ear. “Please, Hunter, don’t let her do anything stupid. Please bring her back to us.”

“I will,” I said. “I already promised Maia I'd bring her back.”

_I’m just not sure if it'll be alive or dead._

As soon as Petra was gone, Maia disappeared into the captain’s cabin. I piloted our ship to the Phobos broadcast station alone to give her some privacy. When we were close enough to see the landing dock, Maia joined me on the flight deck. I did a double take when I saw what she was wearing.

Few humans dressed entirely in dark colors anymore, even if they were unlikely to encounter Slimies. Maia was no exception. Today, however, she'd dug out her old Space Force combat uniform. The black and navy camouflage were now charcoal grey and medium blue, but they were still dark enough to feel thoroughly taboo. The velcro holding her tapes and patches seemed to have weakened from either repeated washings or acid spray, so the edges of the attachments peeled up slightly. Her curly hair had been slicked and combed back into that trademark long, thick French braid. If she’d been wearing a little more makeup and a newer uniform, she would have looked just like her recruitment poster.

She stood in the middle of the flight deck and checked her reflection in the front window. I joined her in staring. Pregnancy and years of hauling heavy crates rather than leading Space Force conditioning drills had changed her body, a fact I only fully appreciated now that I saw her in her old uniform. It still fit, of course, but the trousers were snug on her hips. Her jacket, once comfortably loose all over, was now filled out enough to tell she had breasts underneath. Plenty of women had worn their combat uniforms sized like that; I wouldn’t have given it a second glance on anyone but Maia. As I watched, she donned her patrol cap, which was slightly less faded than the rest of her CU. The practiced way her fingers positioned the hat and smoothed down her braid under it was enough to make me scoot my seat forward so my lap was hidden under the instrument panel.

“Don’t judge me too hard,” Maia said as she threw herself into the co-pilot’s seat.

“Trust me, I’m definitely too confused to judge you,” I assured her. “Did you just get hit with a burst of nostalgia, or—”

“Lester‘s request.” Maia rolled her eyes. “Well, I doubt he knows enough about military dress to specify what he wanted, but I’m guessing ‘that sexy Space Force uniform from the poster’ means my CU. And if not, that’s his problem. I don’t mind Slimies ripping off or sliming up my oldest cammies, but I’m sure as fuck not losing my flight suit. Or my full dress uniform, for that matter—I paid out the ass for that new jacket, and I only got to wear it once! Well, okay, twice if you count my wedding.”

“Well, I don’t know about Lester, but I think fatigues are definitely the sexiest of all the uniforms,” I said lightly. “After flight suits, of course.”

“Oh, trust me, I know you do.” Maia propped her studded black boots on the nav console. “I figured that out our first week together in the 45th.”

“Right... Uh, hey, nice boots,” I remarked, eager to change the topic. _“Totally_ regulation.”

“I wore holes in my combat boots a long time ago, and I wouldn’t buy new ones just for the slimehole, even if I had the money to waste.” She patted through her various pockets and removed knives, folded memos, and other assorted items she’d apparently been storing in the uniform. “I’ll just have to make sure the whole ‘fraternizing with the enemy’ and ‘conduct unbecoming’ offenses distract people from my boots.”

“It wouldn’t be a ‘conduct unbecoming’ charge.”

“Wait, what? Why not?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Sure, why not?" Maia said. "Permission to nerd freely.”

“Okay, well, the whole ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’ thing is from article 133, but it only applies to commissioned officers,” I said, glad for the distraction. “‘Conduct unbecoming a _non-commissioned_ officer’ would just fall under the general article, 134.”

“That’s bullshit!” Maia said indignantly. “I got called a ‘space maggot’ and then worked my ass off for years, and you just went to college before waltzing into Officer Training School! I should be allowed to get court-martialed for ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,’ too! Even if I’m not a real officer! Or a gentleman!”

“Oh, you would definitely still get court-martialed,” I assured her. “Assuming they were assholes who didn’t factor in the coercion behind your actions, which does sound about right for the military.”

“But ‘general article’ is so boring,” Maia said. “‘Conduct unbecoming’ sounds badass and vaguely romantic.”

“Romantic?”

“Like something out of a book. ‘General article’ would be such a disappointment to have following you around forever.”

“For what it’s worth, I think they would definitely hit you with specific charges for this, not the general article. Will it bother you if I—”

“No, like I said, nerd away!” Maia said. “I've missed you rambling about the law. It’s kind of relaxing.”

“Okay, so I’m going to say they would probably go with indecent exposure and aiding the enemy,” I said, “mostly because that’s about the funniest combination I can think of.”

“Isn’t aiding the enemy punishable by death?”

“Death, or whatever the court-martial feels like.” I decelerated as we approached the landing dock. “I don’t know if this would really count as ‘aiding,’ though. It does say something about ‘holding intercourse with the enemy,’ but I don’t think televised alien gangbangs were quite what they had in mind. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure ‘providing comfort to an enemy’ is also punishable by death, whether you’re in the military or not. But that’s title 18, not title 10.”

“Wow. I always forget your brain can store shitloads of interesting things. I can’t even keep track of where I left the baby wipes.”

I glowed warm under Maia’s praise. “If it makes you feel any better, this particular knowledge bank is completely useless now that the U.S. government doesn’t exist anymore. Not to mention, the Slimies are our new government, not our enemy. There’s a whole new set of laws now, and they’re all so nonsensical-sounding, I haven’t memorized half of them yet. But if you ever need to reference a new smuggling or labor rights law, there’s an 89% chance I’ve got you covered.”

"I'll try to remember that." Maia snorted. “Man, I never thought I’d miss the risk of being court-martialed.” 

“Personally, I think you should take advantage of the new regime and do all the things we couldn’t before,” I joked. “Why stop with indecent exposure and aiding the enemy? Why not spice things up with some sexy treason and sedition? Maybe even write some bad checks?”

“Nah, I already spice things up by drinking on the job and disrespecting a superior commissioned officer every other day or so.” Maia frowned as she stuck her hand in her shoulder pocket and, a moment later, held up her Distinguished Space Piloting Cross by its ribbon. 

“You were storing your Piloting Cross in your rattiest CU?” I asked. I thought of my own Defense Superior Service Medal, which had lived in its case—now currently under a gift-wrapped canister of coffee—since I'd moved aboard. 

“Guess so. I vaguely remember having a reason it felt logical to hide it here. I was in a really bad place when I packed everything away, though. It’s a miracle I didn’t freak out and decide to hide it up my ass for six years. Or, you know. Burn it.” 

Maia gazed at the medal for a moment, then shoved it into the Interface holder in the console. With a sudden furious determination, she ripped off the velcro occupational and skill tapes before carefully prying the “45th Mars Defense Squadron” badge off her right shoulder. She picked at her Presidential Unit Citation ribbon, but she had apparently sewn it on. She shoved all the velcro patches on top of her medal in the Interface holder and set a spare multitool on top of them to weigh them down.

“Don’t let me forget where I hid those,” she said.

“I won’t,” I promised.

“And stop throttling so hard.” Maia stroked The Hesperian’s panels lovingly. “You’re making me spacesick.”

“I’ll take it under consideration, Sergeant,” I said as I eased off the throttle.

As soon we docked at the station, a team of medics whisked Maia away. She barely had time to thrust her old Interface into my hand before they corralled her through the airlock. Lester wasn’t among them, but that didn’t ease my anxiety much. That jerk was so slimy, I always half-expected a tentacle to to slip out of his flashy suits. If he wanted to do something awful to Maia (or, rather, something even more awful than the existing awfulness), he didn’t need to be there in person to do it. If he suddenly decided to rape Maia himself and then sell her and her family straight into slavery, I wouldn’t be able to do anything other than enjoy The Hesperian's towship ride to the impound moon.

I paced the airlock for what felt like forever. I tried to distract myself by hooking The Hesperian up to our lot's water, power, and waste connections. It didn't help, but at least Maia would be able to soak in a hot bath if she was allowed to the ship later. Every second brought new, terrible horrors Lester might be doing to Maia.

Finally, though, after what was realistically probably only a half-hour, a shy-looking girl reopened the Phobos side of the airlock. 

“Mr., um… R-Rigel?” she queried, rhyming it with Nigel.

“It’s _Rigel,_ like a rye bagel,” I corrected automatically.

“Oh… right... well… your friend is asking for you,” the girl said timidly. “Mrs. Adams, I mean.”

“I have permission to board the station?” I asked. 

The girl nodded. I followed right on her heels through the building. After several moments of walking, she turned left for “talent” rather than straight ahead or right for “human seating, non-human seating, restrooms, and concessions.” Just when I was convinced I was being herded somewhere no one would noticed me getting jumped, the girl opened a door. I found myself standing outside a small infirmary, and Maia was on an exam table, wearing a medical gown. The high stirrups holding her socked feet forced her knees high in the air, meriting supports under them as well. Maia’s face was pained, but it relaxed a fraction when she saw me.

“Need a rescue?” I asked, ducking through the doorway.

“Nope,” she said with forced lightness. “Just figured I’d be nice and let you hold my hand.”

“Oh boy, just what I always wanted.” Despite my sarcasm, my heart raced like a virginal teen's when I took her clammy hand in mine.

Further conversation was cut off just then when Maia yelped in pain from something the female doctor was doing to her. It looked like they were accessing her military-issued MedImplant and perhaps installing a few additional monitoring devices. I squeezed Maia’s hand, and she fell silent and instead squeezed me back. She kept her eyes closed and her face scrunched up until the doctor finished.

“All done,” the female doctor said, and that was apparently also her goodbye. She stripped off her gloves, washed her hands, and left. 

The young woman helped her navigate a medical cart out of the room, and they let the door slam shut as they disappeared.

“Just one last device to implant,” the male doctor said.

Maia opened her eyes just in time to see what looked like a tiny metal spider disappear under the sheet draped over her knees.

“Wait, what is tha—”

Maia screamed so loudly and gripped my hand so hard it was like she was giving birth to Dion all over again. I wanted to stop the doctor from doing whatever he was doing to her, but it was over before I could formulate any kind of plan.

“Jesus!” Maia blew out a shaky breath. She removed her hand from mine and cracked her knuckles. “Thanks for the warning. What the fuck was that?!”

“Only a uterine implant,” the doctor said. “We have to have an accurate orgasm count, of course.”

“Oh, of _course,”_ Maia agreed sarcastically. 

“Now, I just need to calibrate the device, and you’ll be all finished.” The doctor went about strapping down her arms, legs, chest, and hips.

“Awesome.” Maia’s face was flushed, but she apparently wanted me nearby more than she wanted her modesty preserved. “I’m guessing I should expect more pain?”

“Not necessarily. Calibration involves giving you a quick orgasm to ensure the device is set to detect all orgasms, but only orgasms. There’s quite a lot of other movement and cramping during these shows, so it helps if the device has a control orgasm to extrapolate from.”

The doctor smeared a glob of lube onto his fingers and then stuck his hand under the sheet. I held Maia’s now-bound hand and pretended not to watch. The doctor grabbed a long metal tube that whirred like a cross between a drill and a vacuum cleaner. What looked like nubby little teeth whirled around inside it. It was clearly meant to replicate the sucking mouths at the end of each of the Slimies' tentacles (other than the "tenta-cock"). I recoiled despite myself. Maia stared at the ceiling, one hand still holding mine while the other gripped the side of the table.

“It’s easier if you don’t try to fight it,” the doctor advised. And with that, he stuck the tube under the sheet and vacuum-clamped it onto her.

Maia started and cried out the second it touched her, but her cries jumped an octave a second later, when the doctor turned the dial. As I watched in aroused horror, the tube vibrated wildly. It wasn’t a consistent vibration, either—it slowed and paused at regular intervals. Maia gasped and gulped for breath, her knuckles going white. 

She held out for about thirty seconds before losing control. I think I recognized her impending orgasm before she did, though I'd never properly seen her come before. Something about the way her muscles suddenly spasmed and the way her breath hitched, and for a split second, I was half-delirious in the dark again. I saw Maia’s anguish as she realized what was happening, but by then, it was too late.

“Shit! Wait, stop, it hurts —”

She screamed from the combined intensity of the pain and pleasure, her hand nearly crushing mine. The doctor didn’t stop, though. Instead, he turned the dial up even higher. Maia made sounds I’d never heard her make before, not even when I was field-treating her injuries under forty tons of melted spacecraft.

“Too much!” She thrashed against her restraints. “Too sensitive! This is _not_ what I fucking signed up for! Ow, cramping, ow, ow, oh god no _please—!”_

I realized with amazement she was already coming again. My erection from earlier returned immediately.

“Why aren’t you stopping?” I asked, furious despite my body’s excitement. “She’s already had two!”

“Protocol is to run it for at least 90 seconds or one orgasm,” the doctor said, clearly enjoying Maia’s distress. “Whichever takes longer.”

“90 seconds?! No, please!” Maia was panting now. “Don’t, please, I can’t take anymore—”

It was too late. She was already committed to another painful, uncontrollable orgasm.

I watched the clock as I held Maia’s hand and helplessly rubbed her knee through the sheet for that orgasm, as well as the two that came after it. The doctor stopped the machine right at 91 seconds. Maia collapsed on the table, shaking violently. I glared at the doctor as he replaced the tube in its holder, but he didn’t seem bothered. He removed her restraints and then his gloves before sitting on his rolling stool again.

“Jesus fucking _Christ,”_ was all Maia could say.

“As I said, it’s better if you don’t try to fight it.” The doctor jotted down notes on his tablet. “Have you always been multi-orgasmic?”

“No.”

“Have you ever experienced more than one orgasm in less than five minutes?”

“No.” Maia dabbed at the corners of her watering eyes with her fingertips. “Let me guess: I’m going to cramp like that every time I come?”

“I’m afraid so, sorry.” The doctor didn’t sound sorry at all. “During the match, anyway. We’ll remove it after the match, unless you decide to come back for another round.”

Maia snorted in derision. The doctor only shrugged.

“Some people do.”

“Squidfuckers,” Maia muttered under her breath.

I decided not to point out that she was about to go fuck ‘squid’ herself. I knew what she meant.

“Do you always, normally, sometimes, or rarely experience a milk ejection reflex when you orgasm?”

“If that’s the official word for accidentally spraying milk across the room, then put me down somewhere between ‘always’ and ‘usually.’ Now, am I finished here?”

“Yes.” The doctor scrawled what looked like a signature on his tablet screen and rose. “Best of luck, Miss Adams.”

“It’s _Sergeant_ Adams to you,” Maia snapped. She hated people calling her ‘miss’ on the best of days, but today was clearly not the day to fuck with her.

“Mm, if you say so.”

Once the doctor was gone, I helped Maia sit up. She was still shaking too badly to stand, so I brought her combat uniform to her and helped her get back into it. I had just shoved her milk-soaked gown into a laundry bin and was about to close up her jacket when Lester entered.

“Maia!” he cried in delight, hugging her. “Look at you! I knew that space soldier uniform would look sexy as hell on those post-baby boobs.”

Her chin on his shoulder, Maia made a face for my benefit. Lester released her and took out his Interface 3. I was briefly distracted by the natural edscottite plating on his device, or I might have noticed he was taking a photo of Maia with her jacket halfway open.

“Hey! You can’t just—”

Maia shook her head to stop me. Lester paid no attention to me anyway. He scrolled through his Interface 3 with one hand while rubbing Maia’s shoulder with the other.

“Doctor’s report looks good,” he said as he scrolled. “Oh, bad girl! Five orgasms during your test run?! I should spank you for that. Naughty, naughty Maia! Don’t you and the wifey play with tentacle toys in the bedroom? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Oh, but if you liked the orgasm-tester machine, Maia, you’re going to _love_ the real thing. And hey, they’re going to love _you!_ I’ve never had a show sell out so fast before, and definitely not one with only a week’s notice! More than 8,000 Slimies! And—” He checked his screen and chuckled. “564 humans.”

My discomfort with this whole situation suddenly turned to full-on nausea.

“Why are you here, Lester?” I demanded.

“I just wanted to give Maia a squeeze for good luck before the big show!” He squeezed her breast, and milk shot onto the floor. “Uh oh, floor hazard!”

“Shouldn’t you be saving that for the Slimies?” I asked, wishing I could do anything about the embarrassment on Maia’s face.

Lester finally took proper notice of me.

“Say, Hunter, you look like you enjoyed the physical almost as much as Maia! I’ll loan you one of my girls during the show. Human girls, just to be completely clear, though I’ve got Slimies on speed dial if your taste leans toward holes with teeth.”

“Fuck off,” I snapped.

Lester threw his head back and laughed. “Just kidding! Lighten up, Hunter! I know you ex-military types are sensitive about fucking Slimies. But that’s why today is gonna be so fun! Right, Maia?”

“Of course.” Maia pressed her lips together. “But Lester—” Her bare foot caressed his trouser leg. “I bet you came by to do more than just talk. In fact, I was hoping I’d see you before the show.”

“Maia, Maia.” He wagged his finger at her. “Very cunning, but I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.”

“And what, exactly, am I trying to do?” she asked.

“You’re trying to seduce me in the hopes I won’t make you do the show.” He reached under her jacket again and fondled her breasts more gently this time, causing milk to leak down her stomach. “Oh, that’s beautiful. I don’t usually get to play with naturally milky ones. Damn.” He shook himself. “But Maia, listen, you've gotta understand that I do this every day! The number of sexy women who come through here crying and begging and trying to jump me in the hopes of getting out of a show… I'm not unreasonable, and I've done it before for small debts, but a hundred thousand is too much. If I let my dick run my business and forgave six-figure debts for a couple of private fuck sessions—”

“Oh, I wasn’t trying to get anything written off,” Maia said quickly. “I just wanted some insider tips about the show.”

Lester licked her milk off his hand. “Mmmm, that’s delicious. Anyway, I’ll absolutely give you some insider tips for free. Did they explain how the pay works when you signed the paperwork?”

“Mostly?” Maia chewed on the inside of her lip. “I’d like the basic rundown again, though, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind, Maia! Anything for Mrs. Sergeant Adams! All right, so every human who goes on the show gets paid a baseline of 25,000 bits, plus an extra thousand per Slimey fucked. The only catch is, every female who’s taken more than about 50 Slimies in one show has died. Dead talent is great for ratings, but not so much my worry lines." He pointed to his forehead. "I'm not an easily frightened man, but no one wants a labor audit from the Slimies! Anyway... where was I going with that? Oh! Right. All that to say, Maia, I cap it at 50 Slimies per show now, so you probably don't have to worry about dying.”

“But that’s only 75,000 bits,” Maia said, clearly trying not to panic.

“Never fear!” Lester posed theatrically like an old-timey superhero. “Lester is here! I pushed for our esteemed new government to create a special grant just for humans like you who come on the show and do an exceptional job pushing our overlords’ new propaganda. It’s 25,000 bits, free and clear. All you have to do is act all haughty and fierce to start with—shouldn’t be hard for you—and then at some point, preferably after the intermission, convince the audience you’ve turned into a docile Slimefucker who loves and supports the new government, all thanks to the magic of tenta-cock.”

Maia was silent, thinking through what he’d just said.

“If I don’t do that, a 25,000-bit debt is only worth one slave,” she finally said. 

I tensed, but Maia ignored me. I was starting to think Petra might have had a point about Maia doing something stupid.

“Can I have your word that if I don’t earn enough to cover my whole debt, you’ll enslave me instead of Petra or Dion?” Maia persisted.

“Well…” Lester pretended to hesitate.

Maia put her hand on top of his, stroking the backs of his fingers as she made him squeeze milk down his own forearm. “Dion won’t bring much money in,” she reminded him. “And you know better than anyone how hard natural milk slaves are to find, let alone one as good as me. I express more than a liter of milk a day, and that’s not counting what Dion drinks. Petra wasn’t pregnant, so she can’t even adequately feed Dion without supplementing from my freezer stash or formula. It just makes good financial sense to sell me instead of either of them.”

“People love babies,” Lester argued. “And Dion’s all better now, right? It seems downright unethical to sell you for 250,000 to cover a 25,000 debt.”

“Well, then, you could just keep me as your own private milk slave.” Maia dipped two fingers in a trail of her milk and stuck them in Lester’s mouth. “Imagine me squeezing my milk into your coffee every morning.” Her hand dropped to squeeze the bulge in his turquoise trousers. “And now imagine me sucking your cock while you drink that coffee.”

Lester’s erection looked like it was going to tear a seam, but still he hesitated. “You make a good point, but Petra’s got those advanced degrees…”

“Petra is about as exciting as a dead fish in bed,” Maia lied. “And she hates having her breasts touched. But I _love_ being milked. Did the doctor write down that I spray milk all over when I come? I’m loud as fuck in bed, too. You’ve never sold a milk slave like me, let alone sampled one. I guarantee it. You want me to prove it?”

“Oh, no, I would never dream of taking advantage of the talent,” Lester said, taking off his sequined jacket.

“Then I’ll just have to do the taking advantage.”

With the briefest of apologetic looks toward me, Maia jumped up, grabbed Lester by the hair, and forced him onto the medical table in her place. She nimbly hopped on top of him, fully opening her jacket and grinding the crotch of her CU trousers over his bulge.

“Drink my milk, Lester,” she demanded.

Lester groaned eagerly and lifted her breasts to suckle each in turn. Maia kept grinding on him, eyes shut.

“Oh, fuck, just like that!” she cried in a voice that didn't sound like her own. “Drink my milk! Yeah, that’s it. Be a good boy and drink my milk.”

Lester swore around her nipple. Maia shoved her hand down her trousers and masturbated furiously, still keeping her eyes shut tight.

“Oh, fuck!” she cried. “Suck harder, Lester! I’m about to come!”

Lester yelled something incomprehensible. His hips bucked up to meet hers as a wet spot formed around his zipper. A moment later, Maia came like a pornstar. Spaceplanes are cramped, and it’s not like Maia is necessarily the quietest when she and Petra fuck, but I knew her orgasm here was definitely exaggerated. It didn’t seem to be entirely faked, though; her unattended nipple did spray several spurts of milk onto Lester’s cheek.

When she was finished, she sat back on Lester’s thighs. She was flushed and breathless, but she looked satisfied—and not just because of the orgasm. Lester was a babbling, milk-soaked mess underneath her. She hopped back onto the floor and closed her jacket up to the neck.

“That was fast,” Maia said coolly. “Have you ever actually had sex, or do you normally go off the second you touch a woman?”

“I can get hard again,” Lester said eagerly.

“Don’t bother. You’ll have to buy me yourself if you want to stick your cock in me. Besides, I don’t know if you can handle that yet. I used to be in the military, and I’ve been doing all kinds of kinky exercises to get back in shape since giving birth. I have muscles _everywhere._ If I fucked you as hard as I normally fuck Petra's strap-on, I might snap your poor little cock in half. But if that's too scary for little Lester, then maybe you should go with Petra after all.”

“Christ, Maia.” Lester took a moment to wipe milk off his face, straighten his clothes, and compose himself. “All right, you’ve convinced me. If you don’t make enough in the show, I’ll buy you myself. It would be a waste, though! No one else gets my shit through the checkpoints as reliably as you do. It would be a real shame to see such a hotshot flier reduced to a mindless, orgasming milk-slave.” He licked milk off his lips and tucked his semi-erection back into his pants. “But if you really want me to, fine, I give my word.” 

There was a sudden rumble from above us—the pounding of 54,000 tentacles (give or take) on the metal floors. In most contexts, Slimies doing this merely constitutes a rowdy applause or cheer. In battle contexts, however, it’s a war cry. Predictably, Maia and I both nearly jumped out of our boots due to the whole PTSD issue.

Lester laughed at us. “Relax. That’s just the crowd warming up for you.”

Maia couldn’t suppress her shudder that time. “Great,” she said.

“Come on, that’s our cue to get to the green room!” Lester said. “Hunter, you’re sitting with me. You’ll be close enough to help Maia during intermission, not to mention get a nice view of the action. Let’s go!”

I helped Maia to her feet, and we reluctantly followed Lester to the lift. Thankfully, it didn’t open us directly into the arena (or the “slimehole,” as it’s officially called). Instead, the doors opened into a backstage area.

“Welcome to the green room!” Lester announced.

The area, which was neither green nor a proper room by any measure, must have been named ironically. Maia glanced around the bare metal walls, unimpressed and distracted. The female doctor and young helper from earlier were standing by a cart loaded with stuff like IV fluid bags and bandages.

About a half-dozen women with too-perfect curls and too-long nails and too-thick eyelashes were lounging on a plush sofa and loveseat or leaning on a lit makeup vanity. All of them were wearing light, "friendly" colors, as had been the fashion since Annexation. A blond woman who immediately stared unabashedly at me and Maia wore an all-white gown with a risky dark blue cardigan, and another woman engrossed in what looked like an e-book wore a light blue floral dress. The others favored various shades of light pink. They kept to themselves: talking, finishing their makeup, flashing pictures back and forth between their Interfaces. As we passed, I overheard a woman in a low-cut pink gown saying to the others, "—combat is definitely way more streamlined now, but I never minded doing the math in 11e. But my biggest issue with 12e is all the monsters coming from space. Why was that necessary? It's so tactless!"

There was a grate separating us from the “slimehole,” but we could still see the massive crowd of Slimies filling the stadium-style seats and pools. Across the main arena, I could see a similar “green room” with dozens of Slimies squirming all over each other in anticipation. Between us, they had set up— I tilted my head. _Huh._ From a certain angle, it looked like—

—like blinking lights, so bright they blind my ears to the alarms.

—like names blinking out on my MedImplant console: One. Another. Two at once. Three at once. Five, eight, thirteen, twentyonethirtyfourfiftyfive—

—like floating. Falling. Crashing. Crawling.

—like sawing through my harness by the flashing red glow of a single name. _ADAMS_ | _HR 133↑_ | _BP 96/70↓_ | _T 97.4↓_ | _RR 28↑_ | 

—like blackened metal twisting, creaking, cracking, melting.

—like the sting of vinegar, like coughing, like dripping, like vinegar dripping through a coffee pot, like burning, like fumbling one-handed with my respirator straps, like sizzling on the back of my flight suit, like probes, like—

“Like it?” Lester asked Maia, startling me out of my flashback. “I had it specially designed just for you.”

“Wow, exactly what I want to think about while getting fucked by Slimies,” Maia said. “Oh, Lester, you _shouldn’t_ have.”

“No time for sarcasm! Let’s get your makeup done before the interview.”

Lester pushed Maia over to the women, who immediately sat Maia down at the vanity and started fussing over her.

“We don’t have time to do her hair!” despaired the oldest woman, who was also the tallest and the most heavily made-up.

Lester waved her off. “Leave it like it is!” he said. “That’s how she’s got it in all those famous pictures, so it’ll be what the audience is expecting. Just do her makeup—but Astrid, you’ve gotta be careful not to make her look too different, or they’re gonna accuse us of hiring an actor again. You remember what happened with Mercury Mia from the Meteor Mamas, right? Yeah, the last thing I need is another lawsuit, especially from the Slimies. So layer on enough that we get some good shots when it eventually smears, but not so much she looks like a different person. Got it?”

Astrid appeared to be ignoring him, instead quickly scrolling through pics of Maia in uniform. She stopped suddenly on one of Maia’s recruitment posters and zoomed in. 

“Got it!” she said triumphantly, tapping the screen.

The image appeared on the vanity mirror. Two of the other girls, the ones who had been holding lipsticks and packed color powders up to Maia’s face, stopped to examine the image.

“Let’s go a shade or two darker than her natural color for the lips,” Astrid said. “Miranda, see her eyeliner in the picture? I want that same general shape, but make it a little thicker and extend it past the eye to about... here.” She caressed the corner of Maia’s right eye. “And I know she used black for this picture, but get a liner as close to that military blue as you can get.”

“On it!” Miranda was already opening a slim vial and wiping excess dark blue paint off a thin brush. “Should I use blue for her lashes, too?”

“No… let’s go with the brown-black for her mascara, I think. And lots of layers, but no extensions. We just don’t have the time. Rory, can you work on her eyebrows while Miranda does her eyes? Don’t worry about shaping them; just grab those stragglers.” 

While Maia was getting her makeover, I checked her Interface and nearly dropped it. Petra had sent over a picture of herself nursing Dion… while completely naked and blowing a kiss to the camera. My face grew hot as I read the message.

“We love you, Maia! Good luck today! Think of me (only if you feel safe enough to) and have lots and lots of orgasms. Dion and I love you more than the universe is big. Like I said, do whatever it takes to stay alive and free!”

As the makeup artists reconvened around the vanity mirror to examine Maia’s image, I wordlessly handed her Interface back to her. She glanced distractedly at it, but then the picture caught her gaze so completely she was sucked into staring fondly at the screen. Some of the tension eased from her jaw. She glanced up to make sure the others were distracted, then opened her jacket, flashed the victory sign over her swollen breasts, and quickly covered herself again. As she typed a message to accompany the picture, I wandered off to examine the beverage cart.

Maia quickly called me back. She handed the Interface back to me, and I pocketed it.

“Hey, don’t leave me, asshole,” she teased, but the strain was back in her neck and voice. 

“Sorry,” I said. “I figured you wanted to sext your wife in private.”

“Not much time for that. I think I’m about to go out there.” Maia gestured with her head toward the arena, very carefully not looking at it. “You’ll have to sext my wife for me.”

I playfully saluted her, as she and I often did to each other, but for some reason, this time it made her drop her gaze instead of snorting.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Uh, besides the obvious, obviously.”

“Is there a military code that deals with being a Slimefucking traitor to the entire human race?” she asked.

“Um. I don’t know about that specifically, but good old article 103b is probably your best bet,” I said. 

“Is that the cowardly one?” Maia asked.

“I don’t know. Which one is the ‘cowardly one’?”

“The one about making a fool of yourself in front of enemies,” Maia said. “You know, the one where you get the death sentence for peeing your pants in battle, or running away, or surrendering, or any of that?”

“No, ‘misbehavior before the enemy’ is article 99,” I said. “103b is ‘aiding the enemy.’”

“Oh,” Maia said.

We broke off our conversation as the makeup artists put some last minute touches on Maia’s face. I watched, wishing I could think of something helpful to say. I lamented that I’ve never been good with thinking up words, though, even after spending most of my life trying to keep up with Maia’s witty banter. I mused that I’ve always been better at remembering other people’s words and reciting them back later.

And that’s when I got the idea for how I could encourage Maia.

“‘You have been told, “Do not go gentle into that good night,”’” I began.

Maia looked up so sharply that the woman called Rory had to wipe away stray lipstick from the corner of her mouth. 

I made eye contact with Maia and continued, “‘The words have been poured into you like Centaurium into a fuel tank. They were good words when you were fighting for freedom. They are better words for fighting for survival.’”

The makeup artists had stopped to stare at me, causing my face to grow hot, but I had spent enough time giving speeches in front of the 45th that I didn’t stutter once.

“‘You may think, “But General, I have been fighting for survival this whole time!” And in many ways, you have been. But until this point, the threat against our collective survival has been an abstract one. Although many of you have fought valiantly for your—and your fellow Sentinels’—survival, you did so knowing there were more Sentinels to take your place if your entire element, your entire flight, even your entire squadron perished. Until recently, our battle has been in space, and our civilians safe at home. Then our civilians on Mars were under attack, but the majority on Earth were still safe. But today, these aliens, these extraterrestials who once claimed to come in peace, have brought the fight to Earth. We could continue to defend Earth until the bitter end, but we will not. We will not force a bitter end. Instead, we will lay down our arms, ground our spaceplanes, and force a bitter intermission.’”

Maia nodded slightly. I don’t think she was even aware of it. I kept going.

“‘I now task each of you—man or woman, black or white, civilian or Sentinel—with the hardest battle of your lives. I task you with hiding in your foxholes to outlast the war. I task you with hiding undercover as friends to the invaders for as long as it takes. I task you with teaching your children, and if necessary your children’s children, about the time when humans were free, and no extraterrestrial threat lurked in our orbit. I task you with this mission not because surrender is noble, easy, or desirable. No. I task you with this because it is only by surrendering the battle that _our children can win the war.’”_

A tear slipped down Maia’s cheek. Lester had finally turned to watch me speak. I ignored him and finished the one speech I would have memorized even if that weren't my primary skill in life. This speech had been the soundtrack to Maia tangling our IVs together as she'd climbed weakly into my hospital bed. I could still vividly remember her healthy, unfevered warmth soothing my chills. I took a deep breath before continuing.

“‘What I task you with may sound gentle, but I promise, it will not _feel_ gentle. You must praise the darkness in public and then “burn and rage at close of day.” You must make any alliance, promise, or nicety required to survive. And oh, it _will_ hurt to praise the darkness. It will feel damn near impossible at times. When it does, remember that your last and greatest order is this: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Whether on Earth, on Mars, in space or in hell: Rage. Rekindle. Relight.'" I gave Maia the most commanding officer's stare I could muster. "'Shield humanity's flame at any cost—any cost but your own humanity. I dismiss you now for the last time, Sentinels. Till our flames next join, _rage!_ And may God have mercy on humankind, every last one of us.’”

I saluted Maia again, this time somberly. She stood up straight and saluted back. The makeup artists, Lester, and even the two medical providers clapped, which made me uncomfortable. I hadn’t done it for anyone but Maia. Besides, it wasn't the sort of speech one applauded.

Before Maia and I could say anything else to each other, horrifically loud music made us duck and shield our heads.

“Weeeeeelcome to the slimehole!” a voice shouted over the music.

Maia and I gradually regained our composure and straightened, both of us too shellshocked to feel embarrassed by reflexes that had once saved our lives. Astrid gingerly dabbed Maia’s face with a tissue, while Lester put what looked like a laser rifle into Maia’s arms. 

“Who’s ready to meet this week’s eager victim?” the announcer asked.

Maia visibly braced herself. Sure enough, there was another loud thumping of tentacles on metal.

“I didn’t hear that. Are you fellows not interested?! Should I tell her, 'Never mind'?”

The thumping intensified, now with lots of clicking and shrieking, plus several jeers from the human males.

“All right then, Slimies and gentlemen! You know her as the hero of the Mars Rescue Mission and the face of the former United States Space Force. Now, get ready to see her as nothing but a set of filthy, tentacle-filled slimeholes! Introducing: Sergeant! Maia! Adams!”

The thunderous thumping shook the station. For a moment, I was convinced the top was going to rattle off and expose us all to the thin atmosphere. But the moment passed, and the metal didn't peel or shake away, and I remembered to breathe. I looked down at Maia, who was standing as stiffly as I was. Her body was quaking and her teeth chattering, as if the roof really had blown off. I instinctively pulled her into a hug, but she didn’t relax.

"'Rage, Rage,'" was all I could think to say to her.

"I've never stopped," she said into my chest. She clung to me for a moment, drawing what she needed from me until she was able to stand on her own. “All right," she said. "Let’s get this fuckshit over with."

With that, she rose onto her tiptoes, kissed my cheek, and strode over to the grate. With one last deep breath, she hoisted her rifle into a tactical carry and waded into the brackish, calf-deep water. Somehow, the crowd found it in them to roar and thump even more loudly than before. The grate rolled back down, blocking Maia’s retreat should she change her mind. Maia, oblivious, waved at the audience. They went still more wild. Some threw flowers into the pit; most threw slime, food wrappers, or—to my disgust—what looked like used condoms. A few humans called lewd things, but they were indiscernible over the din. Maia kept waving the whole time.

I, meanwhile, found my knees buckling. I collapsed ungracefully on Lester’s sofa, narrowly avoiding crushing Maia’s old Interface under me. 


	3. Rage, Rage

The camera zoomed right in close to Maia’s face as she entered the slimehole. I couldn’t make out her words over the arena speakers, not with Lester and the women chatting so close to my right ear, so I stared up at the ceiling and fidgeted.

I started when Lester dropped next to me on the sofa and thrust a cold, wet beer bottle into my hand. His five female companions swarmed around him, perching on his knee, the arms of the sofa, and between me and him. I must have blushed when Astrid stuck her hand into Lester’s pants and pulled his cock and balls up over the waistband. Lester caught me staring and smirked.

“I got enough company to share,” he said. “Which ones do you like?”

I shrugged. I had been too focused on Maia to even think about why the women were actually there, and I still had little interest in anything but her welfare.

The shorter blonde whispered something into Lester’s ear, and his face brightened.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said to her, and then to me, “Stella is going to do her best to cheer you up, Mr. Serious. Feel free to use her any way you like. Within her limits, of course. Stella doesn’t have many of those, though. And if you want to another one, just say the word! Despite my considerable prowess, I can’t actually put my dick in four women at once.”

Stella sat on the arm of the couch next to me. She was pretty but not memorably so, if that’s not an asshole thing to think. I took another glance at her face and decided most of her appeal came from how friendly she looked; she didn’t stand out much otherwise. She seemed about Rory’s age—older than Miranda, but a few years younger than Astrid and the serious-looking woman. I was bad at estimating ages, but if I’d had to guess, I would have guessed she was in her mid-20s.

“Hi,” she said with a warm smile. “I’m Stella.”

“Hunter.” I shifted the beer to my left hand and extended my cold, damp hand to her. I thought better of it and yanked my hand back to wipe it on my pants, then offered it to her again.

“I know who you are.” Her smile widened as she shook my hand. “You probably don’t remember me, but I was living in the Gale Crater settlement when the Slimies attacked Mars. I was the only pregnant teenager on your ship, if that jogs your memory any.”

I looked more carefully at her face. I wished I could remember her, but I had spent most of our encounter staring in panic at the radar screen. I nodded anyway.

“I’ve never seen anyone fly like Sergeant Adams!” Stella went on. “And I could tell you were new, but I liked how you respected and listened to Sergeant Adams, even though she was a woman and, I think, your subordinate, right?”

I finally returned her smile. “Maia was my best friend growing up, and she talked me into joining the Space Force in the first place. I was lucky to join late enough in the war to get paired with an NCO I already knew and trusted, because normally that kind of personal relationship between enlisted and commissioned folks is… discouraged.” _To say nothing of officers fucking their subordinate NCOs,_ I added silently. “But desperate times, and all that. Maia knew what she was doing way better than I did, so I usually took her advice.”

“I could tell!” Stella gazed into the distance, remembering. “Seriously, I was in total awe watching your teamwork. The way you noticed their, um, formation, and how to make their bomb explode? That was so neat!”

Her praise made me uncomfortable. “That was pure luck, honestly. I had just read a briefing the day before about Slimies clustering around their ion bombs to charge them, and I took a major gamble with all our lives. It was completely insane, in retrospect. We were literally seconds away from getting melted by every Slimey that side of the asteroid belt. If the rest of my ship hadn’t pulled off the timing perfectly—”

“Don’t be so modest,” Stella said. “But yes, Maia and everyone else was absolutely brilliant, too! I still dream about it sometimes. She flew so close, I could look out one window and see the little teeth in their tentacle-mouths and the individual forks of lightning in their bomb. I thought, ‘Oh, shit, we’re about to die!’ But while I was thinking that, _whooooosh!”_ She jerked her flattened hand quickly through the air, imitating the way The Everest had flung itself through space. “That was the best piloting I’ve ever seen in my life. But I know you had to do the calculations for it, and you kept us from crashing into anything. And it was your idea to hide in the asteroid belt and power down the ship!”

“I stole it from an old movie,” I admitted. “It was more luck the Slimies didn’t study human classics like _The Empire Strikes Back_ before invading.”

“Still!” She tentatively touched my shoulder. “All the other ships hightailed it for Earth and got completely wiped out. I owe you and Sergeant Adams my life, not to mention my son’s life.”

“Your baby made it too?” I asked.

“He turned seven a few weeks ago!” Stella brightened even more. “I hope it’s not too creepy, but, well… it just seemed right to name him Adam Rigel.”

She pronounced ‘Rigel’ correctly and everything. I felt a little swell of pride, despite the current situation. I liked Stella significantly more for giving her son my surname as his middle name, but doubly so for making his first name Adam.

“Thank you. I’ll try to remember to tell Maia later.” I checked that Lester was distracted and lowered my voice. “Will Lester hurt you or anything if I don’t have sex with you?”

“Oh, definitely not.” She sounded amused. “I actually get paid by the hour regardless of whether I have sex with anyone at these shows. Half the time I just sit around looking pretty. Lester hires us to show off his money, not because he actually wants to have orgies the whole time. But if you feel like it, I would be honored to take care of you.” Her cheeks turned pink. “Honestly, you and Sergeant Adams starred in at least a few daydreams after rescuing me. So really, I would be happy to make sure you get Lester’s money’s worth.”

“Ah.” I swallowed. I hadn’t had sex in… I didn’t actually know how many years, but a long time. “That’s… thank you.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable!”

“It’s not that,” I assured her. “I’m just worried about Maia. And to tell you the truth, I don’t like to take my shirt off in front of people anymore.”

“There’s no pressure either way.” She caressed my upper arm and smiled again. “If you decide you need a distraction, I’m here. And you can leave your shirt on! Otherwise, I’ll be happy just to keep you company, if you want it.”

“I’d actually really like that,” I said.

Stella scooted back on the wide arm of the sofa and leaned sideways onto the back, so that her elbow was resting behind my head. I found her perfumed warmth surprisingly comforting, even though she was a stranger. I leaned my head back on her arm, not resting my weight on it so much as enjoying the sensation of another person’s skin on mine.

My attention was refocused just then by Lester turning up the volume on the screen in front of us. Maia’s voice, which had been garbled by the arena speakers, suddenly came through clearly. 

“No, she really is!” Maia was saying with forced cheerfulness. Her thick eyelashes blinked rapidly under the bright lights. “You can ask anyone! Petra is the best therapist in the whole universe! She’s really amazing.”

“Aww, true love,” the interviewer mocked. “Well, Miss Adams, any last words for your sexy psychiatrist wife before the Slimies fuck you into the next solar system?”

In real life, I could see someone behind the cameraman holding an Interface Plus up for Maia to read. Illegible words flashed across its screen, and I watched the on-screen Maia’s eyes flicker briefly to it. Her face lost any hint of a smile, but she kept her teeth bared as she blew a kiss to the camera.

“Only that I love you so much, Petra, and I’ll be thinking of you while the Slimies are sucking my clit!” A muscle in her cheek twitched. “Don’t worry about me running away with one of them—unless I find one who can lick my pussy as good as you do!”

Lester roared with laughter, and a few of the human audience members did the same. 

“That was me! I wrote that!” Lester clapped me on the shoulder and pointed at the TV. “Did you hear it, Hunter? The Slimies might not get the appeal, but no matter what planet or century, I guarantee you, human viewers _always_ lose their minds over just the mention of lesbian sex.”

I must have been hiding my rage about as well as Maia, because Lester took one look at my face and quickly released my shoulder.

“Hey, I just figured I’d throw the humans a bone before Maia pledges her allegiance to the tentacle government,” he said defensively. “I’m not heartless! I do feel bad for her wife and little boy. That’s why I’m letting Maia work off her debt. Well, that and the fact that kids with brain defects and ugly head scars don’t bring in nearly as much as normal kids.”

“How generous of you,” I muttered.

The announcer’s booming voice cut off our conversation. “All right, Slimies and gentlemen! I think it’s time to reward Miss Adams for all her totally useless hard work fighting the war with a tenta-cock or fifty in her tight slimeholes! What do you think?”

The humans roared, “YEAH!” The Slimies raised and slammed their tentacles in unison as their brains collectivized. I recognized the gradually hastening rhythm of the Fibonacci battle tattoo. _BAM! BAM! BAMBAM! BAMBAMBAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!_

“Let’s see how the famous Maia Adams does against Slimies without all those big, strong soldiers to protect her!” the announcer shouted over the noise. “May the best! Species! Win!”

There was one last machinegun-like volley of tentacle-banging, and the grate at the other end of the pit opened. Maia raised her blaster rifle to a low ready as her co-stars roiled out of their own green room. 

I’m regularly surprised to remember that most humans have never met an alien in person. It makes logical sense; statistically speaking, most humans have never even been off the planet of their birth. Those who have usually make a one-way journey to the other inhabited planet, though it’s not exactly unheard of for people to travel back and forth a few times a year for business or even pleasure. The Slimies who work planetside are almost always mining the darkest parts of the ocean or the most radioactive caves of Mars. Even the tentacled politicians and military leaders (a completely overlapping group, as far as we can tell) generally prefer to communicate exclusively through broadcasts. All the settlements attacked before we surrendered were completely annihilated—all except Gale Crater, obviously—so most people currently alive have never seen so much as a sucker in person.

I wish I had been so lucky. I had already decided that if I never saw a clump of Slimies roving together like a giant, tangled eldritch abomination, it would be too soon. Yet that was exactly what was barreling toward Maia as the announcer retreated from the slimehole.

I unconsciously leaned forward to watch, and Stella put a hand on my back. Maia stood her ground at first, taking down Slimies—at least temporarily—with her rifle. I knew the laser blasts were only stunning them, but it was satisfying to watch her pick off those fuckers.

As the horde drew closer, Maia slung her rifle over her shoulder to scramble up to the tallest point of the wreckage, about three meters high. Once her footing was steady, she went right back to shooting from her new vantage point.

She continued to pick them off in twos and threes, but the rifle’s effects were so short-lived that one round was crawling again by the time she finished dispatching the next. They surged in droves up the sides of the wreckage more quickly than she could stun them. 

When she was fully surrounded, Maia quickly locked her rifle’s safety and switched to close-quarters combat. She bashed Slimies with the butt of her rifle and kicked them with her studded boots until they completely engulfed her. A dozen tentacles wrapped around each of Maia’s arms and legs. Her scar was the only patch of her left completely untouched, but I didn’t have time to ponder that at the moment. They wrenched the rifle from her hands and lifted her bodily off the twisted metal.

“You’ll never take me alive, motherfuckers!” 

Maia freed one leg and kicked an attacker in the mantle. Its mouth enveloped her boot, and one of its tentacles circled it. I could see the tip of another tentacle deftly untying the laces. The Slimey sucked Maia’s boot off and spat it into the water, exposing a grey sock that had once been white.

“I’ll kill you!” Maia yelled. “You’d better finish me off, and fast, or I’ll cut every one of you apart, sucker by goddamn sucker!”

I noticed translator Slimies standing in front of each of the massive audience floating pool sections. The translators were making feeble clicks and screeches, and they had turned their skin bright red, their race’s way of communicating both anger and sexual arousal. What made _me_ see red, however, was their positions. 

At some point, our scientists determined that most of the Slimies’ communication is based on posture and a kind of tentacle sign language. It’s the reason we can casually call them “Slimies” to their faces without repercussion. As far as they’re concerned, it’s just a descriptive noise. They don’t even mind being called “squids,” because they revere Earth cephalopods, their distant DNA relatives and the first accidental pilgrims to Earth. You can even call them “Goddamn asshole motherfuckers,” something Maia tested regularly at one point, and they’ll only wave their tentacles in a polite greeting. Gestures, on the other hand? If you slather yourself in red (or worse, black) and spread both hands high over your head, nothing can save you. 

Anyway, I didn’t need the camera translator on my broken Interface Plus 2 to tell me what the female Slimies were saying. They were crouched low and cowardly in the water. Their tentacles were raised, not to their maximum height to indicate true aggression, but just above the surface of the shallow pool. I could hear the Slimies’ clicking laughter all throughout the audience, and I burned with rage and humiliation on Maia’s behalf.

“Put me the fuck down! I’m warning you!”

The clicking around the arena grew louder. The more Maia struggled, the tighter the tentacles wrapped around her. Her patrol cap was knocked into the water far below as another tentacle wrapped around her neck. It squeezed, and Maia made an awful choking noise. As the tentacle cut off bloodflow to her brain, she stopped fighting. When she finally went limp in their tentacles, the crowd beat an approving victory tattoo on the metal floors.

“First takedown goes to the Slimies!” said the announcer. “Will Miss Maia wiggle free and gain the upper hand? The odds don’t look good!”

I was disappointed by the short fight, but not surprised. The show was famous for a fuckhaul of Slimies dominating a single human in a matter of minutes. Everyone knew _Slimeholes_ was nothing but porny propaganda. Still, I’d secretly hoped Maia might put up a better fight than the average college student or whatever.

The Slimies dragged Maia down into the water, half-submerging her as they tore open her jacket. The tentacles, each controlled as much by their own motors as their central and collective brains, instantly fought over her firm nipples. Others frantically sucked at what must have been milk spots on her CU jacket, but the wetness was invisible on the space camouflage.

“Get off me!” Maia kicked her feet weakly. “No!”

The crowd splashed and buzzed in anticipation. The Slimies easily flipped Maia so she was dangling upside down.

Tentacles circled her dangling breasts around the base and squeezed them, pulling them out of the sucking mouths with a noisy _pop!_ and spraying milk onto the fray of writhing, waiting tentacles. They went into a frenzy upon tasting the milk. Tentacles flew everywhere, sucking milk off Maia and each other and battling for access to her swollen nipples. 

Maia squirmed as their tentacle mouths latched on with vacuum seals. Their tiny tongues and teeth were bound to be rotating around her sensitive flesh. The tentacles that weren’t lucky enough to get their own nipple latched themselves to Maia’s stomach and chest, greedily suctioning hard anywhere they found the slightest drop of sweet milk. Maia made to pull them off, but her hands were yanked over her head. Several more tentacles slipped past the waistband of her trousers, wiggling up and down the front, back, and sides. Maia laughed despite herself and fought harder.

“Stop!” Maia protested through peals of laughter. “Quit, that tickles! Haha! Hey! Knock it off, or I’m warning you, I’ll—! Oh shit, _fuck!”_

As her body arched backward into a half-moon, a loud bell clanged through the arena. I nearly jumped off the sofa from the sound. Then I noticed the orgasm counter on the wall switching from 0 to 1. Maia’s orgasm must have triggered another letdown response with her milk, because the tentacles were going even wilder now, flailing and sucking harder than ever. 

“Okay, stop already!” Maia tried to get away from the tentacles moving like snakes under her camo-patterned trousers. “Hey! I said stop fucking tickling me, assholes! Ugh, no, not again! Shit!” 

Another clang, another orgasm. These Slimies knew exactly how to handle a human. The only mercy this time was that their mouths didn’t appear to be quite as merciless as the doctor’s machine had been. Sure, they were determined to make her orgasm several times in a row, but as I vaguely recall, actual mouths suck differently than machine ones. This seemed true for Slimies as well as humans. As the bell pierced the arena again, I saw Maia forget where she was for just a moment and lose herself in the orgasm.

From Lester’s sofa, it all looked suspiciously consensual—something that should have disgusted my mind but pleased my cock. Instead, it was the other way around. I remembered Petra’s encouragement for Maia to have lots of orgasms, and rationally, I wanted that for her too. If this ordeal didn’t have to be terrible for Maia, it shouldn’t be. Don’t get me wrong, my cock absolutely enjoyed the sight of Maia suspended face-down and tickled and milked and massaged to orgasm after uncontrollable, giggling orgasm. But for some reason, my cock was slightly disappointed she wasn’t still screaming and struggling properly.

 _What the fuck is wrong with me?_ I wondered. _I don’t want to see Maia raped, right?_

I imagined Lester forcing himself on Maia, and the overwhelming nausea was a relief. _All right, my cock hasn’t completely lost its mind,_ I thought, and then I nearly laughed at the absurdity of my cock having a mind of its own, like a tiny—no, not _tiny,_ just ‘scaled down’—tentacle. 

I pushed that ridiculous train of thought away and tried to focus again on Maia. New tentacles were regularly pushing the old ones out of the way for their turn suckling. Most people don’t know it, but those self-thinking tentacles _love_ nubbly things. Nipples, clits, toes—if it protrudes even a few centimeters, Slimies are going to suck on it. Maybe that’s how they discovered breastmilk. Whatever the case, that was the treatment Maia’s fingers, nipples, and clit were currently receiving.

Maia’s Interface tingled in my pocket. I checked it and found unread messages from Petra. 

_“I love it! You’re so sexy, babe. <3” _ That had been in response to Maia’s selfie.

_“Good luck. I’ll be here if you want to talk when you’re done!”_

_“Hey, can you have Hunter text me updates?”_

_“You’re probably on stage by now. Sorry, love you. Good luck!’_

I hesitated and then swiped my reply to Petra. “Hi, it’s Hunter.”

Petra wrote back immediately. “Hi! Thanks so much for messaging. How is she doing?”

I glanced up at Maia, who was laughing and trying to pull her feet out of reach. A couple of Slimies were playing with her braid like it was a toy tentacle. They seemed almost curious. One tried inserting the tip into Maia’s mouth, but she spat it out and refused to open her mouth again until they tickled her sides so hard she burst out laughing.

“She’s doing pretty well so far,” I replied with a swipe of my thumb. “Might even be enjoying it, if the orgasm count is anything to go by. She’s still playing the hostile soldier and shouting to be let go, though, so it’s hard to tell. But I think she’s fine. They’re only tickling her right now.”

“Oh, good! I was hoping it would go like that. :) Thank you so much for the update! Would you mind keeping me posted as you can?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you!”

By the time I put the Interface back in my pocket, the tentacles had apparently drained Maia’s breasts of milk, pulled off her remaining boot and both socks, and started exploring her feet. Maia’s feet were, apparently, even more ticklish than her stomach. She kept howling with laughter as the tentacles brushed over her twitching soles. Her tortured shrieks made me want to chuckle every time a little mouth experimentally sucked hopefully on a toe, seeking more of her precious milk. Her face was completely red by the time they started pulling her trousers down.

“No!” she shouted between giggles. “Hey, quit! Don’t you dare steal my pants! Hey!” 

The Slimies only ripped her clothes off more quickly. Once she was completely naked, they forced her legs apart. The camera zoomed in on the tentacle rubbing itself maddeningly over her visibly wet pussy. 

“Oh no you don’t!” Maia trembled and tried to close her thighs, but even that little movement was denied her. “Don’t you dare, don’t you—No!”

The whole arena watched one tentacle slide effortlessly into her cunt while another’s tiny mouth latched onto her unattended clit. There was a collective jump of surprise as the bell clanged almost instantly, and then they cheered and pounded the floors.

“Yet another orgasm for Miss Adams!” the announcer marveled along with them. “I think the Slimies will be going for the cervix soon, and—Oh! Yup, she’ll feel that tomorrow!” 

Maia had suddenly contorted and screamed in a whole new way, like she’d been doused in acid. The sudden change in her tone made me lean forward and peer anxiously into the pit.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Maia’s eyes were watering and her teeth were chattering. “Shit! That—that fucking hurts! What the goddamn fucking… shit… hell… Ouch! No, no, take it out, oh, Jesus Christ, ow!”

“What are they doing?” I demanded. “Are they hurting her? What are they doing?”

The fifth lady, whose name I still didn’t know, spoke up for the first time. “They’re prepping her uterus.”

When I stared at her, bewildered and anxious, she spoke again.

“You know what the hectocotylus is?”

“Sort of,” I said. “The ‘tenta-cock’? It’s the tentacle that produces sperm. Or, or, not sperm, but spermatophores, right?”

“Yes. So, just like mundane Earth cephalopods, Slimies mate using a hectocotylus to transfer the spermatophore to the female. The males also instinctively scoop out any existing spermatophores they find. But unlike most Earth cephalopods, the _KEEE!ktkh-shhhhh_ have thin prehensile tendrils designed to wiggle inside tiny spaces to remove existing spermatophores and massage the receiving sac to ripen it for fertilization.”

I had to pause to memorize that, and it was only once I had stored it to my useless knowledge bank that I realized this lady had just pronounced the actual name of the alien race without so much as a too-long screech. I instantly had a million questions, but the noises Maia was making were more pressing at that moment.

“So… so, they’re fucking her uterus?” I asked, unsure whether I was more horrified or turned on.

“Only with a tiny tendril,” the lady assured me. “Smaller than your index finger.”

“Still. Ouch.”

My left hand ached, and I remembered I was holding a cold beer. I opened it, switched hands, and swigged half of it down to give myself more time to process what I had just learned. On the plus side, the chime of the orgasm bell meant Maia was adjusting to her new agony better than expected.

“How do you know all that?” I finally asked the lady, too amazed not to find out.

“I teach high school biology,” the woman said. “It’s my day job.”

“Oh,” I said, even more taken aback. I looked around at the other women. “Do all of you have day jobs?”

“My day job is being a mom,” Stella said.

“My day job is taking care of my mom,” Miranda said.

“This _is_ my day job,” Astrid said. “But I’m also a freelance makeup artist, and I bartend some when Lester doesn’t need me.”

Rory shrugged. “I dropped out of medical school when the Slimies attacked. My grandma really wants me to go back, but everything is different now. I haven’t figured out what I want to be when I grow up this time around yet.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“Stop!” Maia cried. “I can’t take it anymore!”

Despite everything she had endured today, I hadn’t heard that exact tone in her voice for six years. I tried to swallow my beer, but my throat was so dry that I choked on it. I set the bottle aside and watched.

“Please stop,” Maia was pleading. “I need a break. I really need a break. I can’t take it anymore, I really can’t—”

The Slimies showed no signs of stopping. A tentacle accidentally brushed the scar on her left arm for the first time, and Maia suddenly went limp. I had seen her give in to her ever-present desire to escape before, but never so suddenly. It reminded me of those videos of fainting goats. Even the ear-splittingly loud bell didn’t startle her from her sudden dissociation.

Clang!

The antibacterial ointment in The Everest’s first aid kit had smelled like bike rides around our suburban cul-de-sac on Earth. The salve didn’t actually hurt, except while you were rubbing it into your skinned knee. At ten, Maia had convinced me to rub it in until the pain stopped.

_“The package says, ‘rub into skin for one minute or until pain stops!’”_

_“That means I only have to rub it for one minute!”_ I’d insisted. _“It never stops hurting if you keep rubbing it!”_

 _“Suit yourself!”_ She’d shrugged. _“But you’d better help me rub it into my knee until it stops stinging, because my dad says it’ll hurt a whole lot worse if it gets infected.”_

Clang!

I was surprised she was having another orgasm so soon, but I didn’t begrudge her making the best of the situation. Once I made sure she was still breathing, I slipped back into the flashbacks as easily as the tentacles slipped back into Maia.

_“No… no, I don’t want to. I don’t want to! I said no!”_

Maia hadn’t said it today, which surprised me. Then again, she didn’t say it much since Petra, or at least not loudly enough for me to hear it from my quarters. Commissioned and enlisted quarters were always kept as separate as boys’ and girls’ slumber parties, so I don’t know how early Maia started muttering it in her sleep. I only knew she’d wept it more and more as our food and water stocks had dwindled. She’d done it some in the hospital, but gradually less the longer we'd holed up in the apartment we’d commandeered afterward.

_“Please don’t make me, no…”_

Maia and I became best friends before we could swipe our own names. Even so, I’ve never had the nerve to ask her about the sleep-talking. I’m not afraid of the theoretical answer, whether it’s her paralyzing fear of taxes or the real reason her dad went to jail. I’m afraid she’ll launch into an embarrassing personal story to make me laugh, and I’ll only realize days later she never answered my question. Her misdirection makes her a wonderful smuggler and party guest, but me a less-than-confident confidant.

More than anything, though, I’m most afraid to find out I somehow widened an existing hole inside her, like tugging on a loose sweater thread. I’d been so proud to figure out the coat closet was her favorite hiding spot. Then I’d shattered a slippery lemonade glass and seen the way her eyes had darted to that closet, and I’d hated my impotent knowledge. 

I scratched my chin to ground myself back in the present. The audience seemed mildly annoyed that Maia was being so subdued, but they still seemed hopeful she was about to put on some new exciting spectacle for them. She wasn’t, though. She was just dissociating, resting her mind by letting her body respond without her. And ‘respond’ was one way to describe what it was doing.

Clang!

 _‘You should have drunk the alkaline water instead of rinsing her arm with it,’_ The medic had chided me afterward. _‘Look, do you see how it caused a thermal reaction? It’s just basic chemistry! That’s probably why you’re so much better off than she is—your burns are only chemical.’_

I had been too parched to say I had taken astronomy instead of chemistry in college. I had been too fatigued and feverish to point out the only reason we even had alkaline water in the first aid kit was because we’d been ordered to pour it on all saliva-related injuries. Oh well. “I was just following orders” isn’t a good look on anyone. 

Clang!

Maia absently licked her dry lips, but she didn’t say anything.

 _“I need water,”_ she had whispered from under me. _“I'm so thirsty, Dad. Can I have some wa... some w..."_ Her thighs had twitched under mine as she'd fallen asleep mid-sentence. She'd jolted awake a few moments later. _"Can I have some whiskey, Dad?"_

I hadn't answered. Maia had mumbled incoherently for a few moments.

_"I think I'm sick. I feel like I have a fever. Can I stay home today? I think I have a fever. Can I have some whiskey, Dad? Just a little. My throat is scratchy. I think I'm sick."_

I'd sighed in relief when she'd fallen asleep again. But then—

_"Fuck, I’m so thirsty! Wait, where am I? Shit! I don’t want to be here! I don't want to fucking be here! Please, God, just let me die!"_

_"Stop crying,"_ I'd said sharply. _"The recycler is slow as all hell on generator power, and we don't know how long it will take for MEDEVAC to get us. We can't waste water."_

_“No, no, I don’t want to be here! I want to go home! Or die sooner rather than later! I don't want to live here for the rest of my shitty life, and die of thirst or infection here, and decompose here, and get a statue here—”_

_“Shut up!”_ I'd slapped her, hard, as much to conserve her water as to keep her from voicing my thoughts. _“Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about.”_

She had stopped crying and whimpered softly instead. It had felt so good to hurt her, to scare her into helping me save her.

I'd been too pre-occupied with my own arousal from hitting her to realize why she was suddenly wiggling around in the dark. It wasn't until I'd heard her moan that I'd realized her right hand was now between us, and Maia had started masturbating underneath me.

_"What the hell are you doing?"_

_"Trying to get back to sleep. Will you fuck me, Hunter?"_

_"What?"_

_“I’m so cold, and my arm hurts so fucking badly, and I'm so thirsty. Please, Hunter. I'm pretty sure I'm about to die, and I just want to feel something, something... nice... before I die."_

_“I strictly forbid you from dying, Sergeant Adams.”_

_“Sergeant? I'm... I'm... I'm... I’m so fucking cold, Hunter!"_ She'd been fighting so hard to stay even half-conscious. _"Come on, let's fuck to stay warm! It will help us sleep."_

_"We can't, Maia. We'll get court-martialed."_

_"They’re never coming back for us. Come on, just once. Just to see what it’s like. I always wondered, but I just... just… just…"_ Her hand had stopped moving as she'd dozed off again. Then: _"I just want to go home! I just want my dad! Dad! DAD!”_

I had slapped her again, and she'd gasped and stopped shouting. Instead, she'd moaned and started rubbing herself inside her flight suit again.

 _"Please, Hunter?"_ she'd begged. _"We won't tell them."_

_"I can't."_

_"Oh, fine. Can you at least hit me some more, then? Or choke me. I've never been choked. I didn't think I'd like it. I want you to, though. If I trust anyone in the universe not to hurt me, it's you. Please, Hunter?"_

I hadn't been able to think of any Title 10 code preventing me from slapping Maia while she got herself off. Or rather, I hadn't been able figure out any way for them to possibly prove I hadn't been slapping her to keep her from developing hypothermia during the night. And so I'd slapped her to her heart's content. Once she'd been writhing and moaning under me, a few minutes choking her had seemed perfectly reasonable. And then it had been pulling her hair. Then biting her. Then fucking her.

I had been just lucid enough to know she clearly wasn’t. I hadn’t stopped, though. She hadn’t asked me to. Besides, the salve had never stopped hurting her.

Clang!

I had waited until we were drunk together, on the one-year-surrender-versary, to confess all my crimes to Maia. She had laughed them off. 

_“Convincing my commanding officer to fuck me does sound like me. Was I good?”_

_“No,”_ I’d told her. _“You were lousy. You kept whining for water and then falling asleep. Rinse and repeat.”_

_“Ha! That sounds like me, too.”_

_“You’re not mad?”_

_“Should I be? It was my idea, wasn’t it?””_

_“Yes,”_ I’d said, in response to both.

 _“Whatever, then. Some Spacers commit war crimes to cope. Compared to that, what’s a little fraternization between friends?”_ She had taken my Mars Mule and chugged the rest of it. _“So, did I say anything embarrassing? Spill my darkest secrets to my commanding officer?”_

_“If you don’t remember, then I’m not telling you.”_

_“Aww. Asshole. Well, don’t trust it, whatever I said. It was probably just the fever talking.”_

_“Yes,”_ I had said bitterly. _“That’s abundantly clear now.”_

Clang.

The announcer’s echoing voice startled me out of my flashback again. “Not sure what Maia is doing out there, but the crowd is getting restless! We might be coming up on an intermission here if she doesn’t snap out of it soon.”

I think Maia and I have always been smugglers. We just never realized it until huddling together in that mylar survival sack. That was when Maia had first showed me the smuggling holes inside her, and I had discovered my own. It had been as thrilling as finding her dad's porn stash. Even though I know better, I still sleep better at night telling myself we installed those holes under The Everest as neatly and deliberately as we installed her new bathtub. 

In the floor panel in my quarters, underneath a gift-wrapped canister of coffee beans, I keep a framed newspaper article. Over a picture of Maia and I on stretchers, the headline reads, _'Missing Crew Found Alive! Drone Evades Patrols, Saves Two from Mars Crash.’_ The smaller text below the headline adds, _‘“Nothing short of miraculous”—Space Force drone sent for corpses returns with survivors.’_ Under our picture, the tiny caption says, _‘Hometown heroes: Residents applaud Lieutenant Hunter Rigel, left, & Sergeant Maia Adams, who survived sub-zero temps in their wrecked spaceplane for 8 days, as they're transported into Orlando VA Hospital. Both Sentinels are reportedly “stable and comfortable," suffering only from dehydration, minor saliva burns & mild infections.’ _

Physically, our survival _was_ miraculous. Not quite as mild as the military PR folks had insisted at the time, but still miraculous. The only problem was, those survivals tools we found within us got irradiated on the surface of Mars. They’ve been making us sick ever since we put them back inside us. Maia's radiation affects her memory; I haven't finished figuring out all the ways mine affects me.

There is no violent porn in my Interface search history, even though I didn’t clear it before breaking my new device. For me, sadism is nothing more than a tool I discovered hidden inside a crashed spaceplane. Once I no longer needed to be cruel to keep Maia alive, I lost all interest in sadomasochism. It worries me that so much cruelty was still inside me to begin with, though. That's why I've avoided getting too close to anyone since the crash: if they don't get close, they can't be hurt by the radiation leaking around the seal. They can't accidentally open that smuggling compartment and get hurt by the tool. I don't know how long the half-life is, but I'm sure _someday,_ whatever radioactive material is inside me will eventually decay to safe levels. Until then, it's too risky letting anyone kiss me, much less fuck me or, God forbid, sleep in the same bed as me. Maia might be immune to my radiation, but I've never fucked a married woman and have no desire to change that. Technology is immune to my radiation, so I can get by all right for the indefinite future... as long as Dion never finds the incriminating hiding spots in my quarters.

Obviously, I couldn’t be metaphorical like this during mandatory psychiatry sessions. Nor could I be honest with anyone about fucking the NCO under me. Not even the aforementioned NCO, who remembers very little between the crash and the hospital. Consequently, I became an expert smuggler long before Maia and I ever hefted our first crate of contraband condoms—

"Hunter?"

Clang!

"Huh?"

"Hunter?" Stella was shaking my arm. “Lieutenant Rigel?"

I blinked several times and adjusted my limbs. I felt stiff, and I suspected I'd been sitting rigid during the most upsetting of the memories.

"Are you all right, Hunter?" Stella asked. "You looked like a statue.”

Maia was still suspended in a pile of Slimies. She couldn't be too far gone if she was still able to orgasm. I rubbed my eyes.

“Sorry,” I said to Stella. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Stella raised an eyebrow and glanced down at my lap.

It was only then I realized how tight my pants had gotten. I was also leaking massively, and not only from my cock. However, when Stella sat on my lap and kissed my lips so sweetly, I couldn’t bring myself to push her safely out of the fallout zone. I was too cold; I longed to leech heat from the nearest warm body.

“Do you want me to do anything for you?” Stella rubbed the back of my neck.

“Yes, but it will probably hurt,” I said. "Maybe a lot."

“I don’t mind," she assured me. "Just don't do anything permanent to me.” 

The slight breathiness of her words were good enough for me. Stella easily stripped off her long dress, revealing nothing underneath it. That was a very smart idea, I thought, still half-watching Maia. Very effective for getting fucked by strangers. Maia had gone fully commando for today’s work, too.

Stella climbed on my lap, wearing nothing but her earrings and high heels. She kissed me lightly on the lips again and then gazed into my eyes with her brown ones. “Do you want me to block your view, or do you want me to make sure you can see?”

“Make sure I can see everything,” I answered at once. I had no intention of letting Maia out of my sight if I could avoid it.

“Sure thing.”

Stella slid close to my body and kissed my neck, making sure not to block my view of Maia. I worried for a moment she might get upset if I focused too much on Maia during sex, but then I took out my tool and decided I didn’t give a fuck. Stella was a professional. She was probably as worried as I was about getting ripped off by Lester, not whether a client was less clingy than average during sex.

"Let me know if you want anything specific, okay, Hunter?" She kissed just next to my mouth, in a spot that sent more electricity through me than an ion bomb.

“Rub my back,” I ordered. “Between my shoulder blades.”

Stella obeyed at once. Pleasure ran down my spine like a hot shower when the first set of fingers (at least, the first set not belonging to a medical provider) touched the scarred skin. But it was tempered with disappointment—Stella was not remotely repulsed by my scar. She was massaging the ridges and swirls across my back almost worshipfully. I reached back and pulled her hand away.

“Sorry, did I hurt you?” she asked.

“I changed my mind,” I said, about to rise from the sofa to get some space.

“Would you like me to suck you off?” she offered. “I can deepthroat without choking.” She paused and tilted her head. “Or I can choke and gag on your cock the whole way down, if you’d like that better.”

Normally, I would have come in my pants from the mere idea of a woman effortlessly deepthroating me. But today, for some reason, the latter made me throb more.

“I _would_ like that better.”

I didn’t mind the way her eyelids fluttered with pleasure when I grabbed her ponytail, especially because Maia was now shuddering violently. She wasn’t screaming, nor was she quietly pleading, but that was only because a tentacle was now wiggling its way down her throat. Several were holding her teeth apart so she couldn’t bite down, leaving her helpless against the assault on her throat.

I grunted when Stella sucked my cock into her warm mouth. She stopped a few inches in, and I knew she was waiting for me to do the rest. I raised my hips off the sofa as I pushed her head down. She took me easily in her throat, but, as promised, she coughed and gulped the way Maia was doing. I made a mental note to give her a generous tip once I was myself again.

Maia gagged and made muffled, futile noises of protest. Her watering eyes finally spilled her makeup down her cheeks, reminding me vividly of when I'd spilled lemonade on her fresh watercolor painting. Maia choked again, trying desperately to turn her head, to escape. But the tentacles held her head firmly in place, and down the ones in her throat went anyway. I held Stella’s head just as firmly as the tentacles held Maia, trying to match the tentacle’s pace as I thrust into her throat. 

Maia made a louder, more agitated noise. The TV screen switched to a quick shot of two tentacles spreading her muscular ass cheeks to allow another to rub against her asshole. Then the view flashed back to Maia’s panicked face, just in time to catch her reaction to having her ass fucked for the first time. She couldn’t even scream with her throat stuffed so full. All she could do was hang there, squirming ineffectually and looking absolutely miserable. 

I tightened my grip on Stella’s ponytail as I came down her throat, and I came even harder when the bell tolled another brutally painful orgasm for Maia.

The second I was done, I released Stella’s hair and fell back on the couch. Stella coughed and wiped her face with a tissue, but she didn’t seem injured. She didn't even seem irradiated. She simply took a sip of my lukewarm beer, swallowed it, and beamed at me.

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

For once, the guilt didn’t come when I did. If anything, I felt elated. I’d forgotten how freeing it was not to care about other people, however briefly. I took the beer Stella held out and finished it while I watched the Slimies do their dirty work on Maia. Nope, not a hint of guilt inside me anymore.

At least, not until a few minutes later, when Maia was carried into the green room in a catatonic state.


	4. Strategic Intermission

Maia lay as if comatose under the blanket Miranda had draped over her. I pinched her much harder than necessary. Her reflexes still worked, but her brain had become untethered again.

“Maia.” I shook her. “Maia, come on.”

Lester snapped his fingers in her face, but that didn’t work either. “Come on, Maia,” he said. “Get up and finish the show, or you don’t get paid. If you don’t get paid, I have to put all three of you on the slave market.”

Even that didn’t make Maia didn’t move. I pulled up the naked picture of Petra nursing Dion.

“Maia, look, it’s Petra.” I shoved the device in front of her face. “If you don’t open your eyes right now, Lester is going to make Petra his slave and fuck her in front of you.”

Maia still refused to open her eyes. I slapped her, but she’d grown immune to that by the eighth frozen night. 

“Okay, that’s it, I’m calling Petra!” I threatened. “I’m calling her right now and telling her you’re letting Lester sell her and Dion.”

Maia called my bluff without moving a muscle. Even in my current mindset, and even if Petra could have heard me over the noise of the arena, I wasn’t enough of a tool to do something like that.

Naturally, that was the exact moment Petra decided to text.

“How’s she doing? Is it still going on?”

“Intermission,” I sent, then winced.

Just as I’d feared, the Interface immediately tingled in my hand, and the screen showed Petra calling. I fumbled with the device but managed to reject the call.

“Too noisy to talk. Plus she’s getting tests run by the medics,” I sent, and it wasn’t a lie—at that moment, the doctor and her assistant were indeed administering fluids to Maia and cleaning her injuries.

“Is she OK?” Petra sent at once.

“I think they just don’t want her to get an infection from any tiny little cut,” I replied, which, again, was not technically a lie. 

“How’s she doing emotionally? Is she dissociating?”

Great. Leave it to Maia’s therapist wife to ask directly about the emergency I was currently trying to hide from her.

“She’s done pretty well overall,” I said evasively. _Until now, anyway._ “I think she’s tired. 23 orgasms so far.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah. I’ll make sure she rests during intermission.”

“Thanks. Oh! And one more thing!”

I waited, watching Maia’s unmoving form while the dots bounced up and down on the screen. Finally, Petra’s reply came through.

“I don’t know if they’ll let her eat anything, but if she dissociates or just has a hard time, can you try giving her some juice or something else sweet? Her implant won’t ping unless her blood sugar goes under 40, but we went over her data after the fugue state and noticed a pattern of dissociation and flashbacks correlating with low blood sugar. I think her body didn’t 100% recover from the crash, and now it takes all her resources to keep her trauma under control on an average day. Either way, she’s more likely to dissociate or have flashbacks when she’s sick or hungry or worn out. I’m sure she already told you all this at some point, but I thought I’d mention it again just in case!”

Maia had not, in fact, told me any of that. We’d spent most of the six years since the crash living on the same spaceplane, and she’d still hidden that from me. Or maybe she’d just assumed I already knew. I didn’t care. I resented Petra for knowing something important about Maia that I didn’t. I resented Petra for probably knowing better than to pour alkaline water on an acid burn. Jealousy froze my nervous heat back into cold competence.

“Thanks for the info,” I sent. “I’ll try to find some juice.”

“Thank you so much!”

More bouncing dots. I rolled my eyes. 

“It means so much to me that you’re there taking care of her for me! I understand why she didn’t want me there, but I’ve been so worried she’s going to do something stupid like sell herself into slavery.”

“I won’t let her do that,” I promised. “I’ll tie her up and drag her home by her hair if I have to.”

That idea made me stir behind my zipper again, but I sternly ignored it.

“Thank you!” Petra sent. “Please do, if it comes to that! She said Lester’s better with you, but I still worry. I know you’ve always had Maia’s back, though! She’s so tough most of the time, but I can’t imagine how hard on her this must be. It means so much to me that you’re looking out for her!”

I had no idea how to respond to that. “Thanks,” I said. “Gotta go, checking on Maia.”

Petra sent back another gushing reply, but I didn’t read past, “I understand! Thank you so much again for—”

I shoved Maia’s device back in my pocket and looked around for carbohydrates. All I saw was my empty beer bottle from earlier. However, Stella was now lying next to Maia on the floor, holding a straw to her cracked lips. 

“It’s okay, Maia,” she was saying in a soft voice. “Do you like it better if I call you Maia or Sergeant Adams?”

Maia didn’t answer, nor did she make any attempt to drink.

“That’s okay,” Stella said. “You just save your energy. Since you’re not in the Space Force anymore, I’ll call you Maia unless you tell me differently, okay? Here, let me help you drink this.”

She lifted the straw from Maia’s lips and covered the top with her index finger. The straw pulled up what looked like orange electrolyte drink. Stella stuck the bottom of the straw just past Maia’s lips and released her finger from the top. Half a straw’s worth of orange liquid poured into Maia’s mouth, and, unbelievably, Maia swallowed it. 

Stella patiently repeated the process several more times, talking gently to Maia the whole time. “These shows wear people out. It’s not just you. Honestly, most people say they’re worn out just from the medical exam beforehand. It’s really draining, you know? That’s why there’s an intermission. It gives people a chance to recover a little so the audience can get a satisfying ending.”

Maia silently drank the liquid Stella was giving her like milk to a newborn baby kitten.

“I don’t know if this will make you feel any better,” Stella went on, “but a lot of people are cheered up to find out that on _Slimeholes,_ the intermission doesn’t come halfway through. It’s a strategic intermission, so it comes right before the big finish. You’re not halfway done, Maia. you’re a little over three-quarters done.”

Maia’s eyes shot open at that. “For real?” she croaked, and then she coughed and wet her lips.

“For real.” Stella smiled at her.

Maia lifted her head, and the biology teacher—whose name I still didn’t know—quickly shoved one of the throw pillows from the sofa under it.

“Do you want more to drink?” Stella asked.

“Yes,” Maia said. “Please.”

She let Stella position the straw in her mouth normally, and the orange drink disappeared in about three seconds. Stella poured more into the cup, and Maia immediately sucked that down as well. She closed her eyes, but Stella very gently kept her tethered.

“Maia?” Stella said. “Sergeant Adams? I know this is a weird time for this conversation, but I just wanted to thank you in person for saving me and my baby during the Mars attack. Adam just turned seven, and he’s so proud to be named after you. Is it okay if I show you a video of him?”

Tears trickled from Maia’s closed eyes into her hair. She nodded.

Stella took out an Interface Minus 2 and pulled up a video of a little boy who had the same curly brown hair as Dion. Even on the tiny screen, I could tell their facial features were different, but he might have passed as Dion’s big brother in a pinch. Stella tapped play. The boy, standing in front of a closed door in what looked like an upscale Mars dwelling, was bouncing slightly.

“Can I show her now?” he asked the camera.

Stella’s voice replied, “Hold on, do you want to tell her your full name like we practiced?”

“Oh yeah!” He stood up straight and puffed out his chest, looking very serious. “My name is Adam Rigel Matheson, and this video is for my hero, Technical Sergeant Maia Adams!”

“Why is she your hero?” Stella asked.

“Because when the bad guys were attacking Mars a long time ago, she flew her spaceplane SUPER FAST and exploded the bad guys and saved all the humans!” Adam made a decent spaceplane acceleration sound and jumped as high as he could in demonstration, his arms over his head like a rocket.

“Honey, don’t put your hands over your head, honey,” Stella’s voice said. “Did Technical Sergeant Maia Adams save anyone special?”

“Yeah!” Adam was bouncing again. “She saved ME, and my mom, when I was in my mom’s stomach! I remember it, though!”

“Do you, now?” Stella asked in amusement.

“Mom, can I show her now?”

“Okay, okay,” Stella laughed. “Go ahead and show Sergeant Adams your bedroom.”

Adam flung open his bedroom door and bolted inside. Stella followed behind him at a more leisurely pace. Every inch of his "Space Force Blue" walls had been covered with posters or e-frames, all displaying items to do with Maia, the 45th, the Space Force, or general space travel. His ceiling was painted black and dotted with stars, but right above his bed was an e-frame of Maia looking over her shoulder from behind the controls of The Everest. I recognized it as a recruitment propaganda ad Maia had done just before the crash. Stella zoomed in so the e-frame was visible.

“Hey Adam, what do you do when you’re scared of bad guys under your bed?”

“This!” Adam slammed his hand on a button on the wall, and the e-frame began moving. Adam bounced onto his butt on the bed and gazed adoringly up at Maia on his ceiling.

“A lot of people need hope right now,” Maia said seriously. “A lot of people need protecting. A lot of people need the Space Force. Did you know it was the U.S. Space Force that first detected and pushed back the first invasion attempt? We’ve been defending the human race from the start, and we won’t stop until the invaders do.”

Maia’s ad went on, talking about the services the Space Force provided not only to the United States, but to all humanity, “both on Earth and abroad.” Normally, Maia got embarrassed or moody and couldn’t bear to watch advertisements she’d starred in. This one, however, she watched as if mesmerized.

“A lot of people need the Space Force right now,” Maia repeated as the ad concluded. “But to defend humanity, the Space Force needs a lot of people—on Earth, on Mars, and on spacecraft. So what do you say?” The polished propaganda Maia winked at him. She turned to sit properly in her seat, still looking over her shoulder at the camera. “I’m Technical Sergeant Maia Adams of The Everest, and I’ve been protecting you since day one. Are you ready to help me save humanity?" She paused expectantly. "Then welcome aboard, Sentinel!” She saluted the camera, and Stella lowered her Interface just in time to capture Adam saluting the e-frame back.

Before the e-frame had stopped playing, Adam was ping-ponging around the bedroom, rapidfire-explaining his favorite wall decorations and showing off his various toy spaceplanes and paper books about space and spaceflight.

"And these are my 45th Mars Defense Squadron dolls!" Adam dropped to his knees in front of a yellow dollhouse. "My grandma gave me this space station for them."

He opened the dollhouse to reveal those stupid action figures we'd been all but threatened into modeling for. The damn things didn't even look like us, though they'd clearly spent significantly more time on Maia's face than the rest of ours. To my amusement, Maia and I had both been left in the dollhouse's bathtub for safe keeping.

"These used to be my mom's dolls!" Adam announced proudly. "Lieutenant Rigel was her favorite, though."

"You know, she probably doesn't need to know that, honey," Stella said.

"But I thought you said you wished—"

"What are these?" Stella pointed to the spaceplanes in the dollhouse's garage and first-story living room.

"It's The Everest and the rest of the element!"

In the present, Stella's face turned pink, and she suddenly became very busy adjusting the volume on the Interface. I grinned. The hero worship stuff had first unnerved me, then unthroned me, then haunted me for six years. But now that I'd been exposed as a loser of a lieutenant and quite possibly a mortal human, I liked it. This kid gave exactly zero fucks about my bad calls, and his mom seemed similarly forgiving. I didn't know what to make of that, but it was a nice change of pace.

Adam continued his tour. While Stella paused to focus on a crayon drawing of me, Maia, and The Everest's crew, Adam started calling excitedly for his mom.

“Mom! Mom, point the Interface here!” Adam was eagerly gesturing inside his closet.

Stella joined him and turned on the closet light. Inside, they had built a hidey-hole under the floor. Adam had lifted the floor section and was rooting around inside the whole.

“It’s a smuggling compartment!” Adam explained. “Because Sergeant Adams is the best delivery-flyer in the solar system, too! She hides medicine and stuff from the bad guys, like the pirates and aliens who don’t want her to bring it to sick people on Mars. And sometimes she flies all the way past the asteroid belt _to the platinum mines!”_ From the look on his face, there was clearly no cooler task a grownup could do than fly a long, boring journey one direction and then immediately turn around and haul several tons of rock back the way they had come.

Adam began pulling his treasures out of the hiding space, one at a time. “This is a picture of my dad.” He held up a photograph of a handsome teenager with brown skin, glasses, and a shy smile. “He and my mom fell in love at their school. He died when the bad aliens melted The Olympus Mons with their acid spit and all the humans got pulled into space.” He held up a piece of black metal. “A Space Force officer gave this to my mom. It's a piece of The Olympus Mons they rescued from space.” He held up a different, larger chunk of black metal. “And this is from the hull over the OIC's cabin of The Everest! God used the crashed spaceplane to protect Sergeant Adams and Lieutenant Rigel from radiation and snow and bad aliens for eight days, until the Space Force HQ14B MEDEVAC drone found them and flew them to the doctors, and that’s why we have a second Hanukkah now.”

Stella made a noise as if to correct him, but then apparently decided not to.

Adam was on a roll now. "I have this because when I was a baby, my mom and a bunch of her friends stole all the metal from The Everest and hid it so the bad aliens couldn't use it for their bombs! But my mom kept this piece of the OIC cabin, and—"

This time, Stella did quickly interrupt. "And you used to feel really safe snuggling with it when you were little, didn't you?"

Adam nodded seriously. "When I was little, I was scared of aliens coming to spit their acid on me when I was asleep, but I’m not afraid of that anymore.” He put the floor section back over his smuggling compartment and sat down on it.

"How come?"

"Because one!" Adam held up his index finger. "Aliens aren't allowed to spit acid at humans anymore, because humans have to follow the alien rules. And because two!" He held up the victory sign. "Because Sergeant Adams and Lieutenant Rigel got spit on by the aliens during the big fight after the crash, but it didn't kill them like I thought alien spit does."

I realized with a jolt that, given how soon humanity had surrendered after our rescue, there were probably very few factual accounts about what happened after we'd lost contact with the squadron. If Stella had visited the crash site, she'd probably been able to piece most of the details together. But a battle after crashing? I stifled a laugh. I'd had a battle with my seatbelt, I supposed, and that alone had nearly done me in.

"Also, because my teacher, Mrs. Leonard, said Sergeant Adam's arm burn looks like the poison fish-alien that the bad octopus-aliens are afraid of touching!" Adam said.

Maia and I both perked up at that. I could tell she'd had no more clue than I had.

“Hey Adam," Stella said, "what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I want to be a secret medicine delivery-flyer like Sergeant Adams,” Adam said immediately. “But only until I make a new Space Force and make the aliens go back to where they live.”

“Why?” Stella asked.

“Because Sergeant Adams is really cool! And she saved me before I was born. _And_ I’m named after her, and Lieutenant Rigel, who was helping her save everyone.”

That thoroughly amused me. I couldn’t fault Stella for her accuracy in teaching Adam his history.

“But why do you want to start a new Space Force?” Stella asked.

“Because the aliens just came and started hurting humans and stealing our minerals and algaes, and other things.” Adam was sitting still for once. “They closed the old Space Force, so when I grow up, I’ll have to make a new one and make new spaceplanes to chase the aliens away. I'm going to paint the new spaceplanes to look like the poison fish-alien on Sergeant Adams' arm, and I'm going to making special paint that's hard for the acid to melt.” 

Maia’s chin twitched. Before she could get weepy, however, Adam suddenly shrieked and jumped back onto his feet. 

“Mom! Mom Mom Mom!"

"Yes yes yes, Adam Adam Adam?" Stella teased him.

"When you see Sergeant Adams, will you ask her to write her name on my poster?!” He scrambled onto his spaceplane-themed duvet and started jumping up and down and pointing to Maia’s recruitment poster.

“I can ask, but she’ll probably be really tired from wrestling with the aliens,” Stella said.

“How come I can’t watch the wrestling?” Adam asked. “I’m seven now!”

“It’s illegal for kids to watch,” Stella said, then she quickly changed the subject. “You decided for sure on this one?”

“Yeah!” Adam flopped onto his bed. “It’s my favorite!”

"Okay, I'll do my best!"

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Adam kicked his legs. "Sergeant Adams is going to write her name on my poster!"

"Maybe," Stella cautioned him. "All right, let's—"

In the green room, Stella stopped the video. “Sorry, he’s a talker,” she said.

“Mine is too,” Maia said, and her voice sounded stronger than it had since before she’d been dragged back to the green room. “I loved it. Thank you.”

“That’s right! I heard you’re a mom now, too,” Stella said. “I was so glad for you and your wife when the paper said you’d had a little boy. How old is he now? About one?”

Maia cleared her throat. “Nine months, twenty-two days.”

“Nine months is such a sweet age,” Stella said. “Is he walking yet?”

“No,” Maia said, a little of her usual smile coming back to her mouth. “Some standing. A lot of bouncing. But talking? Oh my god, he loves talking. Babbling, really, because he hasn’t said any words yet. But he and Adam would never shut up if you put them together, I bet.”

“Aww!” Rory and Miranda said together.

“Oh, he sounds adorable!” Stella said. “Do you have any pictures?” 

“Yes.” Maia looked around until her eyes settled on me. “Hunter, do you have my Interface?”

I handed it to her. She unlocked it, gestured for the pictures app, and quickly scrolled through to a video of Dion babbling away at the camera while splashing in the bath, his curly hair spiked into a soapy point.

“Awwwww,” four of the women said, crowding in near Maia’s head so they could see.

The aloof teacher smiled at the video but then went back to her book. I wondered if she just got enough time around kids at her day job, or if Lester paid her to sit around ignoring him except to say scientific things. Actually, that sounded _exactly_ like Lester, come to think of it.

“Oh my God, he has so much hair!” Miranda squealed. “It’s so curly and thick like yours!”

“What a little charmer,” Astrid cooed. 

“He looks _exactly_ like you, no exaggeration.”

“Ahh, look at him try to talk while chewing on his little ducky! Is he teething?”

“He was when I took that video.” Maia flipped to a picture of Dion, mid-laugh, waving his baby spoon in the air triumphantly. His naked chest was covered in green baby food, and his open mouth perfectly showed off his two lower front teeth standing alone together in his gums.

“Awwww!” the other women said again.

“He looks so proud of himself!”

“The little teeth!”

“What’s his name?” Rory asked.

“Dion Everest,” Maia said.

“Oh, that’s a nice name! What made you pick it?”

“Dion means ‘child of heaven and earth,’ or so the internet told us,” Maia said. “We wanted him to feel at home wherever he went.” She dropped her Interface on her chest before letting her arm fall to the floor in exhaustion. “And The Everest was the ship I crashed in, but that’s old news."

Astrid opened a fresh bottle of electrolyte drink, this one clear, and poured it into Maia’s cup. “Lester mentioned you’re doing the show for your baby. Is he all right?”

“Yeah,” Maia said. “He had some brain swelling when he was almost four months old. He’s okay now, but my wife’s insurance company unexpectedly changed to one of those reimbursement ones right before it happened, so I had to borrow the money for his tests and surgery and all that. Then insurance took forever paying, so here I am.”

“Insurance is the fucking worst,” Rory sympathized.

“You’re honestly better off just paying cash if you can,” Astrid said. “The contracted rates are astronomical. Literally!”

“InsureStellar keeps doing that shit to my mom!” Miranda fumed. “She’s been too sick to work since I was ten—how the fuck is she supposed to pay for her hip replacement up front? It’s so ridiculous.”

“Yeah, we have InsureStellar,” Maia said wearily. “Do they usually reimburse your mom for her bills?”

“Eventually,” Miranda said. “Never for the full amount, of course, but close enough to stay afloat. I feel for you, though. I actually met Lester when I did _Slimeholes_ last year, right after my mom’s insurance changed. He didn’t have the propaganda grant back then, but it was enough. I was too scared to take out a loan from anyone who would lend to an unemployed teenager. And it seriously took InsureStellar, like, almost a year to reimburse me! What was my mom supposed to do?”

“Not taking a loan was smart of you,” Maia said. “I guess I should have done mine differently. I just never imagined it would take them so long. It really seemed like the smartest choice.”

“I hope they eventually reimburse you,” Stella said. “And that doing this show helps you and your wife get on top of the bills.”

“Thanks. I do too.” Maia drank the rest of her electrolytes and sat up. “You definitely brought that poster, right?”

Stella beamed. “Oh, absolutely! Are you up for signing it?”

“I wouldn’t dream of _not_ signing it,” Maia said.

Stella fetched a marker and the rolled-up poster from her purse. Maia took her time writing something on it before signing her name and handing it to me. I tried to hand it to Stella unsigned.

“Oh, would you mind signing it too?” she asked. “We only found out you were coming with Maia this morning, or Adam would have talked about you more in the video. I'm pretty sure an autograph from both of you on the same poster would make his entire life!”

I hadn’t been asked to sign an autograph in a long time. I wondered if I even still remembered how to hold a pen. I uncapped the marker and read what Maia had written.

_Dear Junior Sentinel Adam Rigel Matheson,_

_Thank you for being my #1 fan. Saving you and your mom is my favorite thing I’ve ever done in my life, tied only with marrying my wife and having my baby. It was absolutely my honor to protect you two._

_Please let me know when you make the new Space Force, and I will be the very first Sentinel to enlist. Until then, listen to your mom, eat your veggies, and work hard in school. We’ll need lots of strong, smart Sentinels who know how to take orders when we have enough grown-ups to make the new Space Force. That day will come before you know it._

_Very Respectfully,_

_Maia Adams, Technical Sergeant, USSF_

_Former NCOIC, The Everest, 45th Mars Defense Squadron_

I didn’t think I could top that, but I was confident Stella’s little boy would lose his shit over Maia treating him like a fellow Sentinel. I decided to steal her idea. After all, his poster should have stylistic consistency, shouldn't it? I positioned the marker just over the ground so as not to cover up too much of The Everest.

_Dear Sentinel Matheson,_

_It was my pleasure to escort you and your mother to safety during the Gale Crater incident. I’m pleased to hear of your career aspirations and wish you the best of luck. Should you succeed in reforming the USSF, Tech. Sgt. Adams and I eagerly await your orders._

_RRADL_

_V/R,_

_Hunter Rigel, 1st Lieutenant, USSF_

_Flight Commander, The Everest, 45th Mars Defense Squadron_

I cringed as I realized I had autopiloted my way through the valediction and signature and forgotten the “former” before “Flight Commander.” Oh well. Maybe young Adam Rigel would just read it as optimism.

I returned the poster to Stella, who handled it like a newborn baby and couldn’t stop reading our words.

“He’s going to be so excited!” she said. “Oh, I’m scared to roll it up too early and smudge the ink. Thank you so much!”

“Anything for a fan!" Maia yawned and rubbed her eyes, smudging her eye makeup. “Oh, shit! Sorry to ruin the makeup.”

“It’s fine.” Miranda used a tissue to blot the tears and diluted eyeliner under Maia’s eyes. “It was already messed up. Lester has us do it just so it can get messy, anyway, so you’re totally fine.”

“Did someone call my name?” Lester asked brightly. “Hey, Maia! You’re looking better. Ready to go back in?”

I started to protest, but Maia yawned again and nodded.

“What time is it?” she asked. “How long have I been here? 12 hours?”

I checked her Interface. “About two hours, actually.”

“Jesus Christ.” Maia yawned again. “I’m so tired. I’m really almost done, though?”

“Really truly!” Stella assured her.

“Yeah, you just have to go out there and really slut it up for twenty or thirty minutes,” Lester said. “Don’t forget to praise the alien overlords a bunch while coming for them. You’ve gotta earn your grant, or—”

“Don’t worry, I remember.” Maia tossed the blanket off and rose to her knees.

Stella rolled up the poster and held up the victory gesture. “Good luck, Maia!”

Maia returned the victory sign as the other women echoed Stella’s sentiment. I offered Maia my hand, and she gladly accepted my help in rising all the way off the floor. She didn't even appear to realize, in her weary determination, that she was naked. I looked around for her uniform, but it was nowhere to be seen. Oh well. Maia had expected it to get destroyed, though maybe not every single thread of it. I wondered if someone had thrown it away, or if the Slimies had been vindictive enough to spit acid on it.

I walked Maia to the grate separating the slimehole from the green room and stood with her while they prepared to let her in. Maia searched my face, maybe hopeful I’d say something encouraging. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I stood there awkwardly. After a moment of leaning silently against the grate, Maia finally spoke.

"Will you say the part about the children again?"

"What?"

"General Freeman's Surrender Speech," Maia said.

"Oh." I mentally fast-forwarded through the speech and began at the part I thought would be most inspiring. "'We could continue to defend Earth until the bitter end, but we will not,'" I said. "'We will not force a bitter end. Instead, we will lay down our arms, ground our spaceplanes, and force a bitter intermission. I now task each of you—man or woman, black or white, civilian or Sentinel—with the hardest battle of your lives. I task you with hiding in your foxholes to outlast the war. I task you with hiding undercover as friends to the invaders for as long as it takes. I task you with teaching your children, and if necessary your children’s children, about the time when humans were free, and no extraterrestrial threat lurked in our orbit. I task you with this mission not because surrender is noble, easy, or desirable. No. I task you with this because it is only by surrendering the battle that _our children can win the war.’”_

The arena thundered, and the grate rolled open. This time, Maia walked straight to Slimies without even a backward glance into the green room. They met her closer to her side than theirs, due her sluggishness and their collective-enhanced speed in water. Maia hesitated for only a moment before wading into the middle of the pile of waving tentacles.

They welcomed her gently this time, pulling her into the fold and stroking her braid and body with the very tips of their tentacles. Maia shivered, but she didn’t seem to be having a bad time. The Slimies were almost treating her like a group of humans might treat a fluffy cat that walked into their midst, seeking face scratches and head pats.

Maia returned the tentacles’ gentle touch with her fingers. She ran her hands up and down the underside of each of their tentacles in turn, periodically sticking a finger into a tentacle mouth and gasping when it sucked on her fingers.

“Oh, that feels good,” she said, prompting each the white-hued translators to stroke her tentacles together. “I want you to fuck me again. I need at least two tentacles in every hole. Please?”

“What’s this?!” the announcer cried in delight. “It sure sounds like Maia Adams is willingly begging Slimies to fuck her! What happened to, “I’ll kill you motherfuckers!’?”

Tentacles groped her breasts, and Maia moaned loudly.

“That’s right, my breasts have filled up again,” she said. “Please, I need you to fuck all my holes again while you drink every last drop of my milk. I've seen the truth, and I want you to use me.”

One of the tentacles brushed over Maia’s slit, and the camera showed it pull away slicker than it had been before.

“See? I need you to fuck me!” Maia massaged the extra-lubricated tentacle like she was giving it a handjob. “I want you to breed me again with those little tentacles that went into my womb! Come on, _please_ just stick your tentacles inside me again already!”

The Slimies suddenly pulled away from her like a wave sucked back out to sea. One of the Slimies pulled himself up on two tentacles. His high stance signaled assertiveness, but his tentacles were only raised halfway, and his coloring remained a neutral light grey. He was clearly the tentacle monster in command, but he was not unreasonable, or so he seemed to be trying to convey. He made a series of tentacle gestures and mantle clicks and buzzes. I didn’t know the language, but I definitely caught the race name. The screen scrolled its meaning across just after the teleprompter screen did for Maia. 

_Human will beg to worship The Superior Lifeforce._

Maia knew at least as well as any post-invasion human that she couldn’t beg with only her words. She sank onto her knees in the shallow water, and then she lowered herself completely onto her front so that just her head remained above the water.

“Please fuck this inferior lifeforce,” she said. “I can’t be happy unless I get your big tentacles inside me one more time. I need it, Oh Superior Lifeforce.”

The leader crossed its tentacles—a slang sign stolen from humans. _Hmph. I’m not impressed._

The other Slimies all undulated curiously behind their leader. They clearly wanted to fuck Maia, but they were too well-trained to disobey a leader's order.

“Please,” Maia said again, and I could swear I heard the desperation for her family’s freedom in her tone. “Please let this inferior lifeforce prove its devotion.”

When the leader didn’t budge, Maia sat up cautiously. The leader was dripping copious amounts of seawater slime, which floated on top of the brackish water. Maia grabbed two handfuls of the clear gel and smeared it over her breasts. The crowd made aroused (albeit confused) noises.

“Please at least allow me to worship your slimy tentacles and get no pleasure myself,” Maia pleaded. “I’ve never been more aroused in my whole life than when I was being filled by all those wet, slippery tentacles.”

The leader uncrossed his tentacles and spread them open, a gesture that clearly meant, _Go on. Show me._

Maia massaged her breasts with the goop, making sure milk spilled down her stomach and into the water every chance she got. Once her breasts were coated and shining, she swiped the gel down her milky stomach and began rubbing it over her inner thighs. Then, as the crowd started to lose its mind, she scooped fresh slime off the water and used to to masturbate. She easily shoved four fingers inside her cunt, moaning once again like a pornstar as she fucked herself theatrically. Her other hand resumed rubbing and squeezing her breasts. Every few thrusts, she would coat her fingers in more slime.

“Please let me prove my devotion,” she urged the leader of the Slimies. “I’m ready to show the world how much I love The Superior Lifeforce.”

The leader finally held one tentacle out to Maia. It made me think of someone holding out their hand, or more accurately, their foot to a dog to sniff. It held it just out of her reach as it ‘spoke.’

_Human will show devotion._

Maia barely glanced at the teleprompter. “Oh, thank you, Superior Lifeforce!” She slid forward in the water and placed a light kiss on the tip of the tentacle. “Thank you for allowing me to worship your tentacles.”

The leader allowed Maia to worship each of his tentacles in turn. She really threw herself into it, too. She kept herself low in the water, the sign of humbleness and submission. She kissed each tentacle chastely, then licked its sides. When she’d done that to the first three or four, she started stroking and kissing several at once. She licked circles around every sucker that got close to her, all while gazing up at the leader with aroused obedience. 

The leader simply bobbed up and down slightly to indicate his enjoyment. Maia gently grabbed two tentacles in each hand and brought them to her mouth so she could suck on their tips. She even stuck her tongue into the tentacle-mouths to French kiss them as deeply as she coud. 

The audience was rumbling now, and the announcer was rambling, but Maia tuned them all out. I was equal parts nauseated and excited by how thoroughly Maia was degrading herself for the genocidal aliens we’d almost died fighting. Stella stood next to me at the grate separating us from the pit, and I didn’t stop her when she leaned next to me and rubbed my back. Every time her fingers brushed my burn scar, I shivered pleasurably.

As we watched, the tentacles withdrew from Maia’s reach again suddenly. The leader signed something again.

_Human will extol the Superior Lifeforce for technology-eyes._

“The Superior Lifeforce is everything. My pussy is dripping wet because it recognizes the superiority of the Superior Lifeforce.” Maia sank low in the water again and spread her legs for the nearest camera. “My body longs to worship the Superior Lifeforce, which was so strong it nearly annihilated the inferior human lifeforce. Humans were too weak and primitive compared to the Superior Lifeforce. We deserved to be beaten and subjugated by the Superior Lifeforce.”

The station rattled under the force of so many tentacles clapping against the metal floor.

 _Human will speak more,_ signed the leader. 

“Humans are so inferior, we can only be satisfied serving the needs of the Superior Lifeforce any way necessary.” Maia spread her legs wider, holding her hands between her breasts in the prayer gesture. “Please let me serve your needs, oh Superior Lifeforce. Please use all my holes and fill me with your precious sperm and drink all my milk.” She lifted her breasts and squeezed just behind the nipple, spraying milk into the water just far enough away from the mass of tentacles to make them quiver with longing. “Please allow me to serve the Superior Lifeforce! I need to serve you so badly!”

The leader spread its tentacles wide but not tall, signaling an authoritative approval. _Human will serve._

“Oh, thank you!” Maia breathed as the tentacles swarmed around her again. “Yes! Thank you, fuck me, thank you so much—”

A sudden burst of maybe-understanding (and curiosity to prove myself right) made me pull out Maia’s Interface and start filming. I recorded her pulling tentacles to her mouth, kissing them, licking them, and occasionally even sucking on them. She mainly rotated the tentacles nursing from her whenever she decided they’d had their fill. As other tentacles probed her other holes, Maia eagerly grabbed them and forced them inside her with indecent moans. She squirmed as the one she guided into her ass plunged deeper and deeper inside her, wriggling at the base, but she didn’t even try to pull it out. Instead, she helped the tentacles hugging her breasts to squeeze every drop out into the mouths latched onto her nipples. One hand delved between Maia’s legs, and it only took a few seconds of rubbing before the bell chimed again. Not that it was needed this time—Maia’s thrashing and cries of, “Oh, thank you! I love being fucked by the Superior Lifeforce! I’m coming, I’m coming, thank you!” were a slight giveaway.

I stopped filming as Maia sagged against the Slimies, still filled with two tentacles and opening her mouth to take one in her throat. I messaged a copy of the video to myself, and then I manipulated the playback while I kept half an eye on Maia. I was intrigued by the way she seemed to be enjoying not just the pain, but also the submission and humiliation. I hesitated for a moment, then sent the video clip to Petra as well.

“Just to make sure, Maia hasn’t secretly been into tentacle porn this entire time, right?”

Petra replied quickly, “No, that’s definitely short-term, as far as I know. Is she doing okay?”

“She’s doing great,” I said. “I was worried an hour ago, but she bounced back during the intermission.”

“Good. Boy, she wasn’t kidding about ‘embracing the survival masochism.’”

 _Survival masochism._ I immediately fell in love with that concept, to say nothing of its twin.

“Is that a real psychology thing?” I asked her, my heart lifting like a spaceplane.

“I don’t think there are any peer-reviewed articles on the concept, if that’s what you mean,” Petra replied. “But Maia seems to think it’s real.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Gotta go. Show’s almost over.”

“Thanks! Give Maia my love if you have a chance. And thank you again for taking care of her!”

A sudden, sharp yelp from Maia drew my attention back to her. A second tentacle had forced its way into her ass, stretching it impossibly. The unoccupied tentacles soothingly stroked her arms and back and ass cheeks, and one nudged her hand out of the way and latched its sucking mouth onto her clit. Maia hissed in pain but forced her muscles to slacken.

“Thank you!” Maia said through her teeth. “Thank you for fucking me, even though I’m just a pathetic human! I don’t even deserve the pleasure of having your tentacles up my ass, but the pain and pleasure is amazing. I love it. Thank you, thank you so mu—” 

A tentacle filled her mouth just then. I could see it stuffing itself down her throat as Maia threw her head back, and the bell rang with her orgasm yet again.

It was the most degrading, horrible, beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. The Slimies kept adding more and more tentacles to Maia’s holes. She ultimately managed to take two in her mouth, four in her cunt, and three in her ass. They moved asynchronously, which made Maia’s eyes roll back in her head and her orgasm bell ring nonstop. 

The tentacles without a home roamed her body. Suckers latched on at will, leaving even more hickeys along her body. Hectocotylus tendrils tried in vain to wiggle into her nostrils and ears. Not only were multiple tentacles filling every hole, but they were also fucking every crease and crevice on her body. Breasts, knees, underarms, elbows, neck, fingers, thighs, ass cheeks, even between her toes—her entire body was nothing but a warm toy for the Slimies to get off with. 

And as much as Maia’s mind might have hated it, she couldn’t hide the fact that she’d just had at least 11 orgasms without a pause.

The bell stopped ringing suddenly. I looked up to see the mass of tentacles raising Maia high in triumph. Her body was limp and dripping with slime. For a moment, everything froze and went silent. Then I saw her MedImplant vitals displayed in a calm green on the TV for everyone to see.

 _ADAMS_ | _HR 125↓_ | _BP 118/76↓_ | _T 98.9↓_ | _RR 29↓_ |

Her heart rate blinked with each pulse. The world came back to life with the deafening roar. I collapsed against the grate, too relieved to stay upright for moment, and Stella helped support me until I recovered.

“And we have another defiant human fucked into submission!” the announcer said. “This one tried to hide it, but these Slimies have a real talent for unlocking the hidden tentacle slut in every girl they meet! Well, that’s all for tonight, Slimies and gentlemen. Remember, if you want a private show with this human, or any other guest on the show, contact Lester at—”

The Slimies dropped Maia in the water and wiped their tentacles clean on her skin one last time. I was certain she would drown if left unconscious in the water, and my knuckles went white from clutching the grate so hard. But then I saw the water draining from the arena. The triumphant Slimies circled the slimehole, waving and rubbing tentacles with the audience members, but still Maia lay unmoving.

“Why aren’t we going and getting her?” I demanded of Lester.

“Just give it a minute,” Lester said. “The audience likes it when the females are ‘discarded’ after use.”

I growled, testing the grate between me and Maia. It didn’t budge.

“It’s all right, Hunter,” Stella assured me. “They’ll bring her in before she gets too cold.”

I didn’t say anything. While the crowd gradually dispersed, Lester steered me to the sofa.

“Time to talk business,” he said.

The audience eventually emptied, and the medical team went out to check Maia over while Lester had me sign the paperwork for her. I tried to triple-read everything carefully, but I knew I was too distracted. Rather than risking signing Maia’s life over to anyone, I snapped at Lester that I needed more time and instead quadruple-checked the papers. Everything seemed legitimate, but I was soaked in cold sweat by the sixth one.

I kept glancing at Maia. I knew the medics would be removing her uterine implant and tracking device, and I was hoping the pain might rouse her. However, she didn't even stir. It wasn't dissociation this time; the medic came by briefly to inform us Maia had passed out from exhaustion.

"Forty-something orgasms in two hours will do that to you!" Lester chortled. "Thanks, Doc."

I paused in my document-checking when Lester’s escorts joined the medic re-entering the arena. I was baffled at first, but even from a distance, I saw them wiping Maia’s face and body clean and wrapping her in the same blanket from the intermission. Only the aloof biology teacher remained behind in the green room, putting away her things. I thought I saw what looked like a sewing kit go into her tote.

I forced myself to focus and signed a form stating that yes, Maia still gave her consent for _Slimeholes_ to sell copies of her performance in the video archives. I'd have loved to cross an X through the whole thing, but the previous form had specified that a large portion of her 75,000-bit payment was based on assumed future royalties, and that refusing to have her performance sold would forfeit today's pay.

I handed Lester back his Interface Plus 3 and glanced anxiously over at Maia. To my amazement, I realized someone must have snuck her combat uniform off to be flash-laundered during the intermission. The rips in the uniform had been lovingly hand-sewn. Stella and Rory were rolling Maia onto her side while Astrid pulled the CU jacket back on Maia.

“That was such a great show,” Lester said as he tapped away his tablet screen. “What a finish! Record-breaking downloads.” He called into the arena, “Once again, Maia, you’ve made me a rich, happy man!”

Maia didn’t stir, except to be rolled onto her back again by Rory and Stella.

“She’s all squared up with you, then?” I asked.

“Almost,” Lester said. “Just two little details. First, she still hasn’t paid me the thousand bits she owes me for interest.”

“I have a thousand bits,” I said immediately.

“That’s generous of you, Hunter, but I’m also waiting on the bill for Maia’s medical treatments.” Lester nodded toward the medics, who were loading their supplies back into their cart. “It usually runs around 5,000 bits, but Maia will probably owe a good bit more. I’m guessing, I dunno, maybe 30,000 or so?”

I seethed. I knew in my bones this motherfucker had bribed the medical team into charging that much specifically because it was past the line where he’d get two slaves. No doubt he wanted to sell both Maia and Petra, and he didn’t give a shit what happened to Dion without his moms. I had never hated Lester more. This was so completely fucking unfair. Even the goddamn Slimies weren’t this unethical—

Something clicked open inside me so suddenly I could almost physically feel it. It was the same thrilling rush I’d felt seven years ago, watching a dozen red dots blipping closer and closer toward each other. The rush was so strong I didn’t know if I’d be able to talk, so I stood up and once again unlocked the muscle memory of two years delivering speeches to my squadron.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you just say you’re charging your talent for their medical treatment? Medical treatment required solely due to the nature and extent of the profit-generating work they perform for you?”

“What of it?” Lester asked suspiciously.

I stood as tall as I could and looked him directly in the eye. “Under object 13, 7 o’clock tentacle of _KEEE’ktkh’shhhh_ law, it states, ‘Toolholders will not extract any resources from tools. Toolholders will only give fuel and resources to tools,’” I said. “‘Toolholders will protect tools. Toolholders will shelter tools. Toolholders will provide all that is necessary to use tools. Tools will not give fuel or any resources to toolholders.’”

There was a confused silence.

“What?” Lester asked.

I tapped ‘record’ on Maia’s Interface before speaking, just in case. “Under the new law, neither employees nor slaves are allowed to pay for anything required for them to work, including equipment, vehicles, or specialized training. They also must be provided adequate food, shelter, and medical care, or else receive a wage guaranteed to cover those things, in the amounts specified inside the eleventh sucker of the 7 o’clock tentacle.”

“Nice try,” Lester said. “But all my talent are contract workers, not employees.”

“Contract workers no longer exist under the new law.” I tried not to reveal too much of my excitement. “Buying goods from a smuggler is considered an ‘equal associates’ relationship. But generating profits from someone starring in an exploitative sex show undeniably constitutes a toolholder/tool relationship. Charging even one person for medical expenses incurred while performing on _Slimeholes is_ a mid-depth freshwater offense, punishable by 20 rotations of hard labor.”

Lester hid his alarm well, but I knew him well enough to sense it. “Fine, whatever. But I’ve charged my talent for medical treatment for a long time. Who cares?”

“I care,” I said. “And with something affecting this many humans, the Slimies will care, too. Plus!” I couldn’t hide my eagerness as the thought suddenly occurred to me. “I bet humans aren’t the only ones you’ve done this to! Have you been charging the Slimies you employ for their medical care, too? Maybe you just ‘forgot’ to disclose you’d be withholding the amount from their pay?”

Lester’s face told me I’d struck platinum.

“How many Slimies have you employed over the years?” I asked triumphantly. “Hundreds? Thousands? Yes, I think our new government will care quite a bit when they find out about this.”

Lester smoothed his face into a menacing sneer and raised two fingers. “Maybe I should have said, ‘who’s going to _know’?”_

I noticed a glint of metal out of the corner of my eye. His security forces, lurking out of sight until now, were aiming sniper rifles at me from the catwalk above the arena. I quickly tapped stop on Maia’s Interface and flicked up, right, and then down to send the recording to her lawyer. It was marked ‘delivered’ almost immediately.

“Don’t even think about killing us,” I warned. “I just sent your confession to Maia’s lawyer. If you kill us, she’ll tell the authorities everything. But if you let us live, _and_ if you agree not to charge Maia or any future talent for medical treatment, I’ll have the lawyer keep the file to herself.” 

Lester scowled at me, clearly considering my offer. Finally, he made a fist and lowered his hand. The snipers lowered their rifles.

“Fine,” Lester said. “Just hurry and tell the lawyer not to send it to the Slimies.”

“I’ll tell her to wait 24 hours.” My hands shook as I composed the message, and I kept swiping stray letters. “If she doesn’t hear from either me or Maia in a video call on board The Hesperian by this time tomorrow, she’ll contact the Mars Tentacle of the Interspecies Law Enforcement Collective.”

Lester sighed in annoyance. “Whatever.”

I opened my wallet and pulled out my last kilobit. “There.” I slammed it onto the table. “Paid in full, including interest. I’m taking her back to The Hesperian now.”

“Nuh uh,” Lester said. 

“Excuse me?” I didn’t like the conniving way he was staring at the kilobit.

“She has to pay back every bit of her debt herself, or her whole lesson all goes to shit.” Lester crossed his arms.

“Fine, I’ll pay you from her account, then.”

We sat there while I tried to hack into Maia’s bank app. I tried every password I could think of, every birthday and anniversary and inside joke I could come up with. It was no use. I couldn’t unlock Maia’s account, and I had no way to know when she’d wake up, or if she’d even remember her password once she did. I finally gave up and put the Interface back in my pocket.

“It’s 1% of her debt,” I argued. “It's only a thousand bits. Can’t she pay you later today? Or, I can call her wife and see if she—“

“No. I’m allowed to make her pay it personally,” Lester said. “Or work it off.”

“She’s unconscious, dickslime!” My temper finally flared as hot as a solar burst. “If you sell her, I will personally make sure you rot in the coldest, most parasite-infested prison pool the Slimies have—”

Lester held up his hands. “Easy there, Spacer. I didn’t say I was selling her yet. Just that I want her to earn her money.”

“How the fuck is she supposed to work off a thousand bits while unconscious?!”

“She doesn’t have to be conscious to earn it,” Lester said slyly. “But that’s up to you, I guess.”

“Explain,” I ordered, but I already had a bad feeling I knew.

“This whole sexual tension you two have going on, it’s fun and all.” Lester gestured airily from me to Maia. “But what I really want is to watch you two finally fuck. You two spent a week in that burned-out ship together, right? And then you've lived together all the years since then? And you’ve never had so much as a drunken hookup?” He sat back triumphantly. “Yeah, I’m a romantic at heart, so I’m gonna play matchmaker and _insist_ you fuck her before you can take her with you.”

“I‘m not going to fuck her while she’s passed out,” I said, even though I knew full well that I not only had already done that, but I would do it again if I really had to.

“Then we’re at a stalemate,” Lester said. “Because I’m not letting you take her out until she earns every goddamn cent of your kilobit.”

We glared at each other for several moments. 

“Fine,” I said at last. “But I don’t want an audience.”

“I’ll be watching,” Lester said firmly. “Otherwise you’ll try to wiggle your way out of the deal and trick me.”

“Fine, but no one else.” 

Lester grinned in a sharkish way and held out his hand. “Deal.”

I shook his hand, already regretting my decision. Part of me hoped Maia would sleep through this completely; I couldn’t handle being responsible for another fugue.


	5. The Hatches Are Open

Once Lester had dismissed everyone and I’d exchanged goodbyes with Stella and the others, I took a good look around me. The floors were dry now, and most of the lights were off. I almost wished I was doing this in front of the audience after all—at least it wouldn’t have felt so much like the being stranded on a remote corner of Mars again.

I allowed myself to feel hopeful for a moment when Lester grabbed Maia by the underarms and started dragging her across the floor. But rather than dragging her back to the green room, he dragged her under the biggest piece of wreckage in the pit.

“Well?” He pointed inside the cavernous scrap of metal. “Go ahead.”

I crawled inside and lay on top of Maia, trying not hurt her. It didn’t feel quite like it had before, but it was close enough to take my breath away. 

“Just like old times, right?” Lester chuckled.

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to spot him holding a pair of night vision goggles before the last of the lights in the arena went out. 

Details I’d forgotten immediately flooded back. I’d been so proud to print “Officer in Command” the first time, and I’d been so ashamed to print it the last time. It didn’t seem fair that one single decision, one cocksure command to fight instead of flee, could result in such devastating losses. I hadn’t just lost a hundred Sentinels under my command. I’d lost humanity’s trust. I’d lost humanity’s confidence.

I’d lost humanity’s war.

Maia stirred under me, and I knew what I had to do. I pinned her left arm to the metal just above the elbow, pulled down her CU trousers, and found my way inside her with slightly less difficulty than the last time. I clamped my hand over her mouth as she screamed.

“Shh, Maia, it’s me,” I whispered.

She stopped screaming. I removed my hand.

“What are you _doing?”_ she demanded, and the betrayal in her voice was unbearable.

“What I have to,” I said. “I’m keeping you free.”

“Stop!” She was too weak to push me off, but she tried anyway. “Don’t! I don’t want to!”

I pulled my ‘survival sadism’ back out of its hiding place and pinned both her hands while I fucked her.

“Stop! I don’t want to!” Maia burst into tears. “I want to go home! I thought—I dreamt we got rescued! I dreamt I went home, and I met the prettiest lady in the solar system, and I married her, and we had a baby, and—I don’t want to be here! I want to go home!”

She began hyperventilating. I tried to enjoy her distress like before, but to my increasing panic, I couldn’t.

“Maia, wait! That all happened.” I fished through my pockets for her Interface and showed her the lockscreen. Petra and Dion smiled up at us, both wearing spotless white on real Earth grass in honor of Dion’s six-month family photo shoot.

“Shit, I’m still dreaming,” Maia wept. “I’m hallucinating again. But we got out, Hunter, I swear to God, I really thought we got out!”

“We did get out!” I promised. I turned the flashlight on her Interface on and shone it around. “Look! Look at your arm! It’s been healed for years. And did you just dream you were in a televised gangbang, by any chance? Because that really happened. They used the wreckage for the set, remember?”

Maia snatched the device from me and shone it around. Lester winced when she flashed his night vision goggles with it, making Maia giggle through her tears.

“Lester’s watching us,” she said. “Which means this is the arena. Which means…”

“Petra and Dion are real,” I assured her. “And the three of you get to stay together. Free.”

Maia laughed and cried in relief. “It’s over?”

“Just as soon as I finish,” I said unhappily. “Lester’s parting gift to us. Please just hang in there for a few more minutes so I can finish and get us home, okay?”

Maia wiggled her right arm free. She wrapped it around my neck and pulled me in for a deep kiss. I throbbed inside her.

“What are you doing?” I breathed.

“Helping you finish,” she said. “I can stop if you want. I just figured I’d help. But if you don’t like it—”

“No, I do,” I said. “I just—”

She kissed me again, and I forgot whatever I’d been planning to say. As she kissed me, her mind fully present this time, I’d suddenly realized how wrong I’d been.

The hole inside me hadn’t been storing a decaying radioactive weapon all these years. There wasn’t some hair-trigger weapon inside me that might misfire or leak gamma rays into anyone who got too close. No, I realized. I hadn’t taken anything _out._ I had put something _in._

After the crash, I’d dragged Maia’s unconscious body through the wreckage of The Everest. When I’d heard the echo probes over the middeck, I’d pinned a struggling Maia down and covered her mouth (and nose, apparently) until she’d passed out. While waiting for the echo probes to pass, I’d shielded her body—all except her left arm—from the acid dripping from the melted middeck hull. I’d shoved her inside my cabin and sealed it to save air. I’d shoved her inside a Mylar sack to save warmth. And when she’d grown too warm and started asking for her asshole dad, and when the salve never stopped hurting, I’d shoved my own love and humanity inside hiding spaces to save her. 

I’d felt sympathy over Maia forgetting which nooks and crannies she’d stuffed her memories into. I hadn’t realized I’d done the same thing with my own treasures.

“I love you, Hunter,” she said.

I released her left arm and kissed her desperately.

“Are you crying?” she asked in surprise.

“Shut up,” I said, but in the playful tone of a thousand shared launches and reentries. “Lester is watching.”

Maia laughed and wiped my tears away. “Take my CU off,” she said. “It’s really hot under here.”

I immediately helped her out of the boots and combat uniform Stella and the others had just put back on her. Maia lay totally naked under me, and I soaked in the beauty of her body in the light from her Interface. It _was_ hot under this wreckage, but not like two fevers reflecting off Mylar. It was just stuffy from the life support engine humming a floor below us.

“You can fuck me harder than that if you want,” Maia said.

“I will.” I turned my head toward her left hand, which was currently combing through my hair, and I kissed her arm. 

Maia inhaled sharply. Her arm twitched, but she didn’t yank it away.

“Is that okay?” I asked.

“More,” she demanded.

I kissed her scar again, and a violent shiver ran through her whole body. She started fucking me from underneath, trying to rock her hips faster in frustration.

“Again. While you fuck me properly.”

I kissed her scar and did my best to fuck her as hard and fast as she wanted, though she was a lot harder to please while fully conscious. I pressed my lips to the bumpy skin and tried to drag my tongue over the swirling patterns. I remembered what Adam Rigel had said about her scar spooking the aliens and grinned.

"Slow down," she said. "My stomach muscles are so fucking sore. I only want to come once, and if you keep licking my scar like that—"

"Is it the scar, or is it the skin right next to the scar?" I asked. "For me, it's where they meet that's the most sensitive."

Maia threw her head back. "Both. All of it. Holy shit, Hunter."

"It feels okay?"

"It's the most sensitive part of my body to get touched today."

Maia pulled my shirt off and played with my back while I fucked her. She seemed completely unbothered by where we were and what was happening, and she kept randomly laugh-crying nonsequiturs, though not delirious ones.

“We escaped!” she would exclaim in delight every so often. “We really escaped! My family is free! The gangbang is over! I’m going back to my ship after this! There are kids out there, kids growing up desperate to finish the fight! And I’ll see Petra and Dion tomorrow!” 

Her happiness was contagious, and soon I was laughing and crying just as hard as she was. When we finally came together, it was with our scars hidden not from each other, but by each other.

I had grand ambitions for making Maia an amazing dinner, brewing her a huge cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey, and washing her hair in the bath for her.

What I ended up doing was supporting her back to The Hesperian (where she promptly collapsed on the floor and refused to move any further), carrying her to her cabin, helping her into a nightshirt, and then stumbling into bed next to her with a handful of meal pouches. We barely managed to stay awake long enough to finish our “dinner.” Actually, I had to pry Maia’s second pouch out of her clenched fist after she passed out halfway through it. A few minutes later, I dozed off in my boxers and undershirt snuggled close to her.

I slept harder than I’ve slept since the war started. I woke up once to Maia coming back from the bathroom, but I fell back asleep the second she nuzzled her face against the back of my neck and draped her left arm over me. It didn’t feel romantic, just two friends holding each other after an exhausting battle. And maybe it was my exhaustion, but the last thing I thought before I fell asleep was, _I don’t care if it’s romantic or not. I’m just glad it’s out in the open again._

I woke up hours later, and Maia was still asleep next to me. I yawned, and she stirred.

“Time to get Petra?” she asked drowsily.

“No,” I said, checking my watch. “Not for a few hours.”

Maia yawned too and sat up. “Do I have time for a bath?”

“Depends on how long a bath you have in mind,” I teased. “But yeah, you should. I’ll bring you some breakfast.”

“Oh joy, a feast of protein packs and caffeine pills,” she said as she rolled out of bed. “Oh, fucking hell, I’m sore. Are we connected to water?”

“Should still be,” I said. “I hooked it up yesterday while you were getting poked by the doctors. I figured you’d want a bath after the show.”

“You figured right.”

I went to the galley, where I brewed a small pot of coffee and made the best breakfast powdered eggs and shelf-stable bacon could provide. I was counting on her being famished after her ordeal the day before. While I cooked, I heard the water pipes creaking as they filled Maia’s bath. When I knocked on the bathroom door, Maia was floating in her huge tub, Interface in hand and expressing milk into the bottles connecting her to her breast pump.

“Come in,” she said.

I pushed the door all the way open and entered. Maia didn’t cover herself.

“Breakfast.” I handed her my offering.

“You’re my absolute favorite person right now,” Maia said as she snatched the plate from me and shoveled scrambled eggs into her mouth. She was so focused on the food that she didn’t notice the mug at first. 

“Is that coffee?” she finally asked with her mouth full.

“Black with one sugar.” I handed her the cup.

Maia swallowed forcefully as she took the cup. “Asshole! You’ve been holding out on me?!”

“I was saving a canister for your birthday,” I said. “I decided to break it out for a special occasion.” 

“Have I mentioned lately that I love you?” she asked.

I smiled. “I could stand to hear it more.”

I sat down on the closed lid of the plastic vacuum toilet and watched her savor her coffee in between huge bites of bacon and egg sandwiches on rehydrated biscuits.

“Are you going to tell Petra about what Lester made us do?” I asked, certain I knew the answer already.

“I already did,” Maia said.

If I’d still been holding anything, I would have dropped it. “What?! I thought you were all about protecting her from the sordid details.”

“I am!” Maia said. “But that was too big a thing not to mention. You know how sharp she is about team dynamics. She would have noticed us being weird about it, and it would have caused a fight if I didn’t tell her about it.”

“How did she take it?” I asked nervously. “Should I start packing?”

“No, of course not.” Maia looked surprised. “She said she’d been expecting something like that from Lester. She said to give you a big hug from her and thank you for saving our family.”

“Sorry about it anyway,” I said, unable to meet her gaze. “It was cruel of Lester to make us do it in the wreckage.”

“Do you think so?” Maia looked even more surprised. “If I didn’t think Lester was petty enough to try retaliating, I’d thank him for making us do it there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! When I saw that the ‘slimehole’ had been designed like the wreckage, I was like, ‘Okay, here’s my chance to get that closure Petra is always going on about.’ I didn’t get it until you were lying there with me, though.”

Relief flooded me. I leaned back against the wall. “Really?” I asked. “You’re not upset about it?”

“Not even a little,” she said. “Try thinking about the wreckage. The _real_ wreckage.”

I made a face. “I try extremely hard not to do that, as a general rule.”

“Do it anyway,” Maia said. “Think about us being trapped in there and hurt and alone and scared and thirsty. Bang bang bang! That’s Slimies smashing across the hull. Are you stressed? Are you having flashbacks?”

I tried thinking about that nightmare of a week. I could remember it as clearly as normal, but for once, it didn’t consume me. The memories were unpleasant, but they didn’t hurt so bad they took my breath away anymore. 

“What the fuck?” I frowned. “It’s totally different. Not the memories, but the way they affect me. What happened?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the same for me!” Maia happily slurped her coffee. “I remembered more while we were having sex. Things I really couldn’t remember remembering until I did. But even that doesn’t hurt.”

“I mean, I don’t feel _great_ about it,” I said.

“Me neither. But I don’t feel panicky and controlled by it anymore. Do you? No flashbacks, racing pulse, urge to run away?”

“Nope.” I stared at her in shock. “I kind of don’t know how to feel about this.”

“Me neither. I told Petra she was going to get rich curing people’s trauma by making them have sex in wrecked spaceplanes, but she said it was already a well-known thing. I mean!" Maia snickered. "Presumably not that specific therapy, but the general concept. Also, apparently we might have been cured already if we hadn’t refused to go to therapy, but that's obviously bullshit. She said something about flooding and implosions, I don’t know. I failed Psych 101 due to the whole alien invasion inconvenience. But I _think_ her point was that going back to a place that hurt you, and then feeling positive emotions for a while there—it can change your nervous system’s response to that trigger. Don’t tell her I said that, though, because I’m sure I totally jumbled it up.”

Jumbled or not, it made sense to me. It just felt correct.

“So what now?” I asked after a moment of comfortable silence.

“We go pick up my wife and baby in a little bit,” Maia said, still wolfing down her breakfast. “And then I guess we figure out how to get through the day without flashback-induced adrenaline. Sounds weird.”

“I hear some people use coffee for that,” I quipped.

“Oh, that reminds me! After we do all that, our next stop is Earth, where I’m going to buy a year’s worth of coffee beans,” Maia said.

“Do you have the cash for that?” I asked. 

“Yeah!” She scraped the last of her breakfast off her plate and tapped on her Interface screen before turning it around for me to see. “Look at that beautiful bank account balance! Just… bask in it with me for a minute.”

I stared in confusion at the number on the screen. “Did Lester send you the amount you earned?” I asked. “Do we have to get it to him before we leave?”

“Nope.” Maia took another sip of coffee. “I woke up this morning to a notification that the insurance company had direct-deposited my reimbursement into my account. Those slow-ass motherfuckers. They couldn’t have done it yesterday morning? But whatever. I have savings again, so if we lose another shipment or Dion has another emergency, at least I won’t have to take out another loan. Oh, and we're paying you for yesterday.”

I opened my mouth to argue.

"Don't argue!" Maia cut me off. "Petra and I agree, so there's no stopping it. Work has been slow, and I know you paid Lester my interest. It's already in your account."

"Okay," I said. I knew better than to argue when Petra and Maia both agreed strongly on anything. "Thank you."

"No, thank _you."_ Maia downed the rest of her coffee and then stared sadly at her empty cup. “I don’t suppose there’s more coffee, is there?”

I rose and took her cup. “As a matter of fact, there’s still half a pot left.”

“I love you,” Maia said.

“I know,” I quipped, then remembered I had opened all my compartments again. “I love you too.”

I kissed her wet forehead and went to refill her mug.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my cheerleaders and beta readers: anysin, brecht, El, jasminetea, and plutonianshores! This story wouldn’t have been possible without the advice, creativity, proofreading, and encouragement each of you provided. Any remaining mistakes were 100% added by me at the last minute when I remembered a snippet I forgot.
> 
> I've made a playlist for this fic. I can post it if there's interest once author reveals happen!
> 
> Rejected titles include:  
> "Alienfuck Deductibleworld"  
> "Pounded in the Butt by Title 10 of the US Code of Military Justice"  
> "Pounded in the Butt by My Own Perfectionism and My Own Worldbuilding and the Lack of Existing Canon Details About the U.S. Space Force"  
> "The Risk I Took Was Calculated, But Man Am I Bad at Math"


End file.
